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THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 

GIFT  OF 

Professor 
Benjamin  H«  Lehman 


i 


/  1  t/  L 


MATTHEW  ARNOLD 


MATTHEW  ARNOLD 


BY 


GEORGE   SAINTSBURY,  M.A. 

PROFESSOR    OF    ENGLISH    LITERATURE    AT 
EDINBURGH    UNIVERSITY 


NEW    YORK 
DODD,  MEAD   AND    COMPANY 

1899 


Copyright,  1S99, 
By  Dodd,  Mead  and  Companv. 


Add'l 


GIFT 


John  Wilson  and  Son,  Cambridge,  U.S.A. 


/ 


PREFACE. 


Mr  Matthew  Arnold,  like  other  good  men 
of  our  times,  disliked  the  idea  of  being  made 
the  subject  of  a  regular  biography ;  and  the 
only  official  and  authoritative  sources  of  informa- 
tion as  to  the  details  of  his  life  are  the  Letters 
published  by  his  family,  under  the  editorship 
of  Mr  G.  W.  E.  Russell  (2  vols.,  London,  1895).! 
To  these,  therefore,  it  seems  to  be  a  duty  to 
confine  oneself,  as  far  as  such  details  are  con- 
cerned, save  as  regards  a  very  few  additional 
facts  which  are  public  property.  But  very 
few  more  facts  can  really  be  wanted  except 
by  curiosity  ;  for  in  the  life  of  no  recent  person 
of  distinction  did  things  literary  play  so  large 
a  part  as   in   Mr   Arnold's :    of  no   one   could    it 

*  Mr  Arthur  Gallon's  Matthe^v  Arnold  (London,  1897)  adds  a 
few  pleasant  notes,  chiefly  about  dachshunds. 

244 


vi  PREFACE. 

be  said  with  so  much  truth  that,  family  affec- 
tions and  necessary  avocations  apart,  he  was 
tohis  in  Hits.  And  these  things  we  have  in 
abundance.^  If  the  following  pages  seem  to  dis- 
cuss them  too  minutely,  it  can  only  be  pleaded 
that  those  to  whom  it  seems  so  are  hardly  in 
sympathy  with  Matthew  Arnold  himself.  And 
if  the  discussion  seems  to  any  one  too  often 
to  take  the  form  of  a  critical  examination, 
let  him  remember  Mr  Arnold's  own  words 
in  comparing  the  treatment  of  Milton  by 
Macaulay  and  by  M.  Scherer : — 

"Whoever  comes  to  the  Essay  on  Milton  with  the 
desire  to  get  at  the  real  truth  about  Milton,  whether 
as  a  man  or  a  poet,  will  feel  that  the  essay  in  nowise 
helps  him.  A  reader  who  only  wants  rhetoric,  a  reader 
who  wants  a  panegyric  on  Milton,  a  panegyric  on  the 
Puritans,  will  find  what  he  wants.  A  reader  who  wants 
criticism  will  be  disappointed." 

I  have  endeavoured,  in  dealing  with  the  master 
of  all  English  critics  in  the  latter  half  of  the 
nineteenth  century,  to  "  help  the  reader  who  wants 
criticism." 

^  It  is  impossible,  in  dealin<^  witli  them,  to  be  too  grateful  to  Mr 
T.  B.  Smart's  Bihlwtrra/'hy  of  Matthc7u  Arnold  (London,  1892),  a 
most  craftsmanlike  piece  of  work. 


CONTENTS. 


CHAP.  PAGE 

I.    LIFE    TILL    MARRIAGE,   AND   WORK    TILL    THE    PUB- 
LICATION  OF   THE   POEMS  OF    1853               .                .  I 

II.   LIFE    FROM    1851-62 — SECOND    SERIES    OF    POEMS — 

MEROPE — OX   TRANSLATING   HOMER     .                .  47 

III.  A  FRENCH  ETON— ESSAYS  IN  CRITICISM — CELTIC 

LITERATURE — NEW   POEMS — LIFE     FROM     1862 

TO   1867  .  .  .  .  .  .78 

IV.  IN   THE   WILDERNESS                  ....  I23 
V.    THE    LAST   DECADE       .....  167 

VI.   CONCLUSION     ......  213 

INDEX                   ...,».  231 


MATTHEW   ARNOLD. 


CHAPTER   I. 

LIFE    TILL   MARRIAGE,    AND   WORK    TILL   THE    PUBLICATION 

OF   THE    POEMS    OF    1 85 3. 

Even  those  who  are  by  no  means  greedy  of  details 
as  to  the  biography  of  authors,  may  without  in- 
consistency regret  that  Matthew  Arnold's  Letters  do 
not  begin  till  he  was  just  five-and-twenty.  Even  then 
they  are  not  copious,  telling  us  in  particular  next 
to  nothing  about  his  literary  work  (which  is,  later, 
their  constant  subject)  till  he  was  past  thirty.  We 
could  spare  schoolboy  letters,  which,  though  often  in- 
teresting, are  pretty  identical,  save  when  written  by 
little  prigs.  But  the  letters  of  an  undergraduate  — 
especially  when  the  person  is  Matthew  Arnold,  and 
the  University  the  Oxford  of  the  years  1841-45  — 
ought  to  be  not  a  little  symptomatic,  not  a  little 
illuminative.  We  might  have  learnt  from  them  some- 
thing   more    than    we    know    at     present     about     the 

I 


2  MATTHEW   ARNOLD. 

genesis  and  early  stages  of  that  not  entirely  com- 
prehensible or  classifiable  form  of  Liberalism  in 
matters  political,  ecclesiastical,  and  general  which, 
with  a  kind  of  altered  Voltairian  touch,  attended  his 
Conservatism  in  literature.  Moreover,  it  is  a  real 
loss  that  we  have  scarcely  anything  from  his  own 
pen  about  his  poems  hcioxQ  '  Sohrab  a?id  Rustiim  — 
that  is  to  say,  about  the  great  majority  of  the  best 
of  them.  By  the  time  at  which  we  have  full  and 
frequent  commentaries  on  himself,  he  is  a  married 
man,  a  harnessed  and  hard-working  inspector  of 
schools,  feeling  himself  too  busy  for  poetry,  not  as 
yet  tempted  by  promptings  within  or  invitations  from 
without  to  betake  himself  to  critical  prose  in  any 
quantity  or  variety.  Indeed,  by  a  not  much  more 
than  allowable  hyperbole,  we  may  say  that  we  start 
with  the  book  of  his  poetry  all  but  shut,  and  the 
book  of  his  prose  all  but  unopened. 

We  must  therefore  make  what  we  can  of  the  sub- 
ject, and  of  course  a  great  deal  more  is  to  be  made 
in  such  a  case  of  the  work  than  of  the  life.  The 
facts  of  the  latter  are  but  scanty.  Matthew  Arnold, 
as  all  the  world  knows,  was  the  son  —  the  eldest 
son  —  of  the  famous  Dr  (Thomas)  Arnold,  Head- 
master of  Rugby,  and  Regius  Professor  of  Modern 
History  at  Oxford,  where  he  had  earlier  been  a  Fel- 
low of  Oriel.  Dr  Arnold  survives  in  the  general 
memory  now  chiefly  by  virtue  of  his  head-master- 
ship,   which    was   really    a    remarkable    one,    whatever 


LIFE  AND   WORK  TO    1 85 3.  3 

distinction  it  may  owe  to  the  loyalty  of  such  a  group 
of  pupils  as  his  son,  Dean  Stanley,  Clough,  "Tom 
Brown"  Hughes,  and  others.  But  he  was,  if  not 
positively  great,  a  notable  and  influential  person  in 
many  ways.  As  a  historian  he  was  alert  and  intelli- 
gent, though  perhaps  too  much  under  the  influence 
of  that  subtlest  and  most  dangerous  kind  of  "popular 
breeze "  which  persuades  those  on  whom  it  blows 
that  they  are  sailing  not  with  but  away  from  the 
vulgar.  As  a  scholar  he  was  ingenious,  if  not  very 
erudite  or  deep.  He  was  really  a  master,  and  has 
been  thought  by  some  good  judges  a  great  master,  of 
that  admiraljle  late  Georgian  academic  style  of  English 
prose,  which  is  almost  the  equal  of  the  greatest.  But 
he  was,  if  not  exactly  cupidus  7iovarum  rerum  in  Church 
and  State,  very  ready  to  entertain  them ;  he  was  curi- 
ously deficient  in  logic ;  and  though  the  religious  sense 
was  strong  in  him,  he  held,  and  transmitted  to  his 
son,  the  heresy  —  the  foundation  of  all  heresies  —  that 
religion  is  something  that  you  can  "bespeak,"  that  you 
can  select  and  arrange  to  your  own  taste ;  that  it  is 
not  "to  take  or  to  leave"  at  your  peril  and  as  it 
offers  itself. 

On  August  II,  1820,  Dr  Arnold  married  Mary  Pen- 
rose, and  as  he  had  devoted  his  teaching  energies,  which 
were  early  developed,  not  to  school  or  university  work, 
but  to  the  taking  of  private  pupils  at  Laleham  on  the 
Thames,  between  Staines  and  Chertsey,  their  eldest 
son   was    born   there,    on    Christmas    Eve,    1822.       He 


4  MATTHEW   ARNOLD. 

was  always  enthusiastic  about  the  Thames  valley, 
though  not  more  so  than  it  deserves,  and  in  his 
very  earliest  letter  (January  2,  1848),  we  find  record 
of  a  visit,  when  he  found  "the  stream  with  the  old 
volume,  width,  shine,  rapid  fulness,  '  kempshott/'  ^  and 
swans,  unchanged  and  unequalled."  He  was  only  six 
years  old  when  his  father  was  elected  to  the  head- 
mastership  of  Rugby ;  he  was  educated  in  his  early 
years  at  his  birthplace,  where  an  uncle,  the  Rev. 
John  Buckland,  carried  on  the  establishment,  and  at 
the  age  of  fourteen  he  was  sent  to  Winchester,  his 
father's  school.  Here  he  only  remained  a  year,  and 
entered  Rugby  in  August  1837.  ^^  remained  there 
for  four  years,  obtaining  an  open  Balliol  scholarship 
in  1840,  though  he  did  not  go  up  till  October  1841. 
In  1840  he  had  also  gained  the  prize  for  i)oetry  at 
Rugby  itself  with  Ala?-ic  at  Rome,  a  piece  which  was 
immediately  printed,  but  never  reprinted  by  its  author, 
though  it  is  now  easily  obtainable  in  the  1896  edition 
of  those  poems  of  his  which  fell  out  of  copyright  at 
the  seven  years  after  his  death. 

It  is  an  observation  seldom  falsified,  that  such  exer- 
cises, by  poets  of  the  higher  class,  display  neither  their 
special  characteristics,  nor  any  special  cliaracteristics  at 

^  The  editor  glosses  this  variously  spelt  and  etymologically 
puzzling  word  "landing-stage."  But  unless  I  mistake,  a  "kemp- 
shott," "  campshcd,"  or  "  cnmpshedding  "  is  not  a  landing-stage 
(though  it  helps  to  make  one)  so  much  as  a  river-wall  of  stakes 
and  planks,  put  to  guard  the  bank  against  floods,  the  wash  of 
barges,  &c. 


LIFE   AND   WORK  TO    1S53.  5 

all.  Matthew  Arnold's  was  not  one  of  the  exceptions. 
It  is  very  much  better  than  most  school  prize  poems : 
it  shows  the  critical  and  scholarly  character  of  the  writer 
with  very  fair  foreshadowing ;  but  it  does  not  fore- 
shadow his  poetry  in  the  very  least.  It  is  quite  free 
from  the  usual  formal  faults  of  a  boy's  verse,  except 
some  evidences  of  a  deficient  ear,  especially  for  rhyme 
('•full''  and  -''beautiful,"  ''palaces"  and  "days'").  It 
manages  a  rather  difficult  metre  (the  sixain  rhymed 
ababcc  and  ending  with  an  Alexandrine)  without  too 
much  of  the  monotony  which  is  its  special  danger. 
And  some  of  the  tricks  which  the  boy-poet  has  caught 
are  interesting  and  abode  with  him,  such  as  the  ana- 
diplosis  — 

"  Yes,  there  are  stories  registered  on  high, 
Yes,  there  are  stains  Time's  fingers  cannot  blot "; 

in  which  kind  he  was  to  produce  some  years  later  the 
matchless 

**  Still  nursing  the  unconquerable  hope, 
Still  clutching  the  inviolable  shade," 

of  the  Scholar-Gipsy.  On  the  whole,  the  thing  is 
correct  but  colourless  ;  even  its  melancholy  is  probably 
mere  Byronism,  and  has  nothing  directly  to  do  with 
the  later  quality  of  Dover  Beach  and  Poor  Matthias. 

Of  Mr  Arnold's  undergraduate  years  we  have  un- 
luckily but  little  authentic  record,  and,  as  has  been 
said,  not  one  letter.  The  most  interesting  evidence 
comes    from     Principal    Shairp's    well-known    hues    in 


6  MATTHEW   ARNOLD. 

Balliol  Scholars,  1840-1S43,  written,  or  at  least  pub- 
lished, many  years  later,  in  1873  :  — 

"  The  one  wide-welcomed  for  a  father's  fame, 
Entered  with  free  bold  step  that  seemed  to  claim 
Fame  for  himself,  nor  on  another  lean. 

So  full  of  power,  yet  blithe  and  debonair, 

Rallying  his  friends  with  pleasant  banter  gay, 

Or  half  a-dream  chaunting  with  jaunty  air 
Great  words  of  Goethe,  catch  of  Beranger, 

We  see  the  banter  sparkle  in  his  prose. 

But  knew  not  then  the  undertone  that  flows 
So  calmly  sad,  through  all  his  stately  lay."  1 

Like  some  other  persons  of  much  distinction,  and  a 
great  many  of  little  or  none,  he  "  missed  his  first," 
in  December  1844,  and  though  he  obtained,  three 
months  later,  the  consolation  prize  of  a  Fellowship  (at 
Oriel,  too),  he  made  no  post-graduate  stay  of  any 
length  at  the  university.  The  then  very  general, 
though  even  then  not  universal,  necessity  of  taking 
orders  before  very  long  would  probably  in  any  case 
have  sent  him  wandering;  for  it  is  clear  from  the 
first  that  his  bent  was  hopelessly  anti-clerical,  and  he 
was  not  merely  too  honest,  but  much  too  proud  a 
man,  to  consent  to  be  put  in  one  of  the  priests* 
offices  for  a  morsel  of  bread.  It  may  well  be  doubted 
—  though  he  felt  and  expressed  not  merely  in  splendid 
passages  of  prose  and  verse  for  public  perusal,  but  in 
private  letters   quite    towards  the  close   of  his  life,  that 

1   Glen  Desseray  and  other  Poems.     By  John  Campbell  Shairp. 
London,   iSSS.     P.  218. 


LIFE  AND    WORK   TO    1 85 3.  7 

passionate  attachment  which  Oxford  more  than  any 
other  place  of  the  kind  inspires  —  whether  he  would 
have  been  long  at  home  there  as  a  resident.  For 
the  place  has  at  once  a  certain  republicanism  and  a 
certain  tyranny  about  its  idea,  which  could  not  wholly 
suit  the  aspiring  and  restless  spirit  of  the  author  of 
Switzerland.  None  of  her  sons  is  important  to  Ox- 
ford —  the  meanest  of  them  has  in  his  sonship  the 
same  quality  as  the  greatest.  Now  it  was  very  much 
at  Mr  Arnold's  heart  to  be  important,  and  he  was 
not  eager  to  impart  or  share  his  qualities. 

However  this  may  be,  there  were  ample  reasons  why 
he  should  leave  the  fold.  The  Bar  (though  he  was  actu- 
ally called  and  for  many  years  went  circuit  as  Marshal  to 
his  father-in-law,  Mr  Justice  Wightman)  would  have 
suited  him,  in  practice  if  not  in  principle,  even  less  than 
the  Church ;  and  he  had  no  scientific  leanings  except  a 
taste  for  botany.  Although  the  constantly  renewed  cries 
for  some  not  clearly  defined  system  of  public  support 
for  men  of  letters  are,  as  a  rule,  absurd,  there  is  no 
doubt  that  Mr  Arnold  was  the  very  man  for  a  sinecure, 
and  would  have  justified  the  existence  of  Pipe  or 
Hanaper  to  all  reasonable  men.  But  his  political 
friends  had  done  away  with  nearly  all  such  things,  and 
no  one  of  the  very  few  that  remained  fell  to  his  lot. 
His  father  had  died  in  1842,  but  the  son  served  a  short 
apprenticeship  to  school-teaching  at  Rugby,  then  be- 
came private  secretary  to  Lord  Lansdovvne,  the  Presi- 
dent of  the  Council  (it  is  now  that  we  first  meet  him  ag 


8  MATTHEW  ARNOLD. 

an  epistoler),  and  early  in  1851  was  appointed  by  his 
chief  to  an  inspectorship  of  schools.  Having  now  a 
livelihood,  he  married,  in  June  of  that  year,  Frances 
Lucy  Wightman,  daughter  of  a  judge  of  the  Queen's 
Bench.  Their  first  child,  Thomas,  was  born  on  July  6, 
1852,  and  Mr  Arnold  was  now  completely  estated  in 
the  three  positions  of  husband,  father,  and  inspector  of 
schools,  which  occupied  —  to  his  great  delight  in  the 
first  two  cases,  not  quite  so  in  the  third  —  most  of  his  life 
that  was  not  given  to  literature.  Some  not  ungenerous 
but  perhaps  rather  unnecessary  indignation  has  been 
spent  upon  his  "drudgery"  and  its  scanty  rewards.  It 
is  enough  to  say  that  few  men  can  arrange  at  their 
pleasure  the  quantity  and  quality  of  their  work,  and 
that  not  every  man,  even  of  genius,  has  had  his  bread- 
and-butter  secured  for  life  at  eight-and-twenty. 

But  in  the  ten  or  twelve  years  which  had  passed  since 
Alaric  at  Rome,  literature  itself  had  been  by  no  means 
neglected,  and  in  another  twelvemonth  after  the  birth  of 
his  first-born,  Matthew  Arnold  had  practically  established 
his  claim  as  a  poet  by  utterances  to  which  he  made  com- 
paratively small  additions  later,  though  more  than  half 
his  life  was  yet  to  run.  And  he  had  issued  one  prose 
exercise  in  criticism,  of  such  solidity  and  force  as  had  not 
been  shown  by  any  poet  since  Dryden,  except  Coleridge. 

These  documents  can  hardly  be  said  to  include  the 
Newdigate  poem  {Croffiwell)  of  1843  :  they  consist  of 
The  Strayed  Reveller  and  other  Poe?ns^  by  *'  A.,"  1849  ; 
Empedodes  on  Etna,  a?id  other  Poems  [still]   by  "  A.," 


LIFE  AND   WORK  TO    1 85 3.  9 

1852  ;  and  Poems  by  Matthew  Arnold,  a  new  edition, 
1853 — the  third  consisting  of  the  contents  of  the  two 
earlier,  with  Empedodes  and  a  few  minor  things 
omitted,  but  with  very  important  additions,  including 
Sohrab  and  Rust  urn,  The  Church  of  Brou^  Requiescat^ 
and  The  Scholar-Gipsy,  The  contents  of  all  three  must 
be  carefully  considered,  and  the  consideration  may  be 
prefaced  by  a  few  words  on  Cromwell. 

This  dyojvLcrfxa,  like  the  other,  Mr  Arnold  never  in- 
cluded in  any  collection  of  his  work ;  but  it  was  printed 
at  Oxford  in  the  year  of  its  success,  and  again  at  the 
same  place,  separately  or  with  other  prize  poems,  in  1846, 
1863,  and  189 1.  It  may  also  be  found  in  the  useful 
non-copyright  edition  above  referred  to.  Couched  in 
the  consecrated  couplet,  but  not  as  of  old  limited  to 
fifty  lines,  it  is  "  good  rhymes,"  as  the  elder  Mr  Pope 
used  to  say  to  the  younger ;  but  a  prudent  taster  would 
perhaps  have  abstained,  even  more  carefully  than  in  the 
case  of  the  Alarie,  from  predicting  a  real  poet  in  the 
author.  It  is  probably  better  than  six  Newdigates  out 
of  seven  at  least,  but  it  has  no  distinction.  The  young, 
but  not  so  very  young,  poet  —  he  was  as  old  as  Tennyson 
when  he  produced  his  unequal  but  wonderful  first  vol- 
ume —  begins  by  borrowing  Wordsworth's  two  voices  of 
the  mountain  and  the  sea,  shows  some  impression  here 
and  there  from  Tennyson's  own  master-issue,  the  great 
collection  of  1842,  which  had  appeared  a  year  before, 
ventures  on  an  Alexandrine  — 

"  Between  the  barren  mountains  and  the  stormy  sea  "  — 


lO  MATTHEW  ARNOLD. 

which  comes  as  a  pleasant  rehef,  and  displays  more  than 
once  (as  he  did  afterwards  in  Trisfrajn  and  Iseuli)  an 
uncertain  but  by  no  means  infelicitous  variety  of  couplet 
which  he  never  fully  or  fairly  worked  out,  but  left  for  Mr 
William  Morris  to  employ  with  success  many  years  later. 
Otherwise  the  thing  is  good,  but  neghgible.  It  would 
have  taken  an  extremely  strong  competition,  or  an  ex- 
tremely incompetent  examiner,  to  deprive  it  of  the  prize ; 
but  he  must  have  been  a  sanguine  man  who,  in  giving 
the  author  that  prize,  expected  to  receive  from  him  re- 
turns of  poetry. 

Yet  they  came.  If  we  did  not  know  that  the  middle 
of  this  century  was  one  of  the  nadirs  of  English^  criti- 
cism, and  if  we  did  not  know  further  that  even  good 
critics  often  go  strangely  wrong  both  in  praise  and  in 
blame  of  new  verse,  it  would  be  most  surprising  that 
The  Strayed  Reveller  volume  should  have  attracted  so 
little  attention.     It  is  full  of  faults,   but  that  is  part  of 

1  This  statement  may  seem  too  sweeping,  especially  as  there  is 
neither  room  nor  occasion  for  justifying  it  fully.  Let  us  only  indi- 
cate, as  among  the  heads  of  such  a  justification,  the  following  sins 
of  English  criticism  between  1840-1860 —  the  slow  and  reluctant 
acceptance  even  of  Tennyson,  even  of  Thackeray ;  the  obstinate 
refusal  to  give  Browning,  even  after  Bells  and Potnegranates,  a  fair 
hearing  ;  the  recalcitrance  to  Carlyle  among  the  elder,  and  INIr 
Ruskin  among  the  younger  innovators  in  prose;  the  rejection  of  a 
book  of  erratic  genius  like  Lavettgro  ;  the  ignoring  of  work  of  such 
combined  intrinsic  beauty  and  historic  importance  as  The  Defence 
of  Guinevere  and  FitzGerald's  Omar  Khayyam.  For  a  sort  of 
quintessence  of  literary  I'hilistinism,  see  the  advice  of  Richard 
I''ord  (himself  no  Philistine)  to  George  Borrow,  in  Trofessor  Knapp's 
Life  of  the  latter,  i.  3S7. 


LIFE  AND   WORK  TO    1853.  II 

the  beauty  of  it.  Some  of  those  faults  are  those  which, 
persevering,  prevented  Mr  Arnold  from  attaining  a 
higher  position  than  he  actually  holds  in  poetry ;  but 
no  critic  could  know  that.  There  is  nothing  here 
worse,  or  more  necessarily  fatal,  than  many  things  in 
Tennyson's  1830  and  1S32  collections :  he  overwent 
those,  so  might  Mr  Arnold  have  overgone  these.  And 
the  promise  —  nay,  the  performance  —  is  such  as  had  been 
seen  in  no  verse  save  Tennyson's,  and  the  almost  unno- 
ticed Browning's,  for  some  thirty  years.  The  title-poem, 
though  it  should  have  pleased  even  a  severe  judge, 
might  have  aroused  uncomfortable  doubts  even  in  an 
amiable  one.  In  the  first  place,  its  rhymelessness  is 
a  caprice,  a  will-worship.  Except  blank  verse,  every 
rhymeless  metre  in  English  has  on  it  the  curse  of  the 
tour  de  force^  of  the  acrobatic.  Campion  and  Collins, 
Southey  and  Shelley,  have  done  great  things  in  it ;  but 
neither  Rose-cheeked  Lau7'a  nor  EueJiing,  neither  the 
great  things  in  Thalaba  nor  the  great  things  in  Queen 
Mab,  can  escape  the  charge  of  being  caprices.  And 
caprice,  as  some  have  held,  is  the  eternal  enemy  of  art. 
But  the  caprice  of  The  Strayed  Reveller  does  not  cease 
with  its  rhymelessness.  The  rhythm  and  the  line- 
division  are  also  studiously  odd,  unnatural,  paradoxical. 
Except  for  the  "  poetic  diction  "  of  putting  "  Goddess  " 
after  "  Circe  "  instead  of  before  it,  the  first  stave  is  merely 
a  prose  sentence,  of  strictly  prosaic  though  not  inhar- 
monious rhythm.  But  in  this  stave  there  is  no  instance 
of  the  strangest  peculiarity,   and  what  seems    to  some 


12  MATTHEW   ARNOLD. 

the  worst  fault  of  the  piece,  the  profusion  of  broken-up 
decasyllabics,  which  sometimes  suggest  a  very  "  cor- 
rupt "  manuscript,  or  a  passage  of  that  singular  stuff 
in  the  Caroline  dramatists  which  is  neither  blank  verse, 
nor  any  other,  nor  prose.     Here  are  a  few   out  of  many 

instances  — 

"  Is  it,  then,  evening 

So  soon  ?     [/  see  the  night-dews 

'  Clustered  i)i  thick  beads\  dim,"  etc. 

•  ■  «  •  • 

["  When  the  white  darun  first 
Through  the  rough  fir-J>lanks."\ 

•  •  •  •  • 

["  Thanks,  gracious  One  ! 
Ah  !  the  sweet  fumes  again. *^1 

•  •  •  •  • 

["  They  see  the  Centaurs 
In  the  upper  glens y\ 

One  could  treble  these  —  indeed  in  one  instance  (the 
sketch  of  the  Indian)  the  entire  stanza  of  eleven  lines,  by 
the  insertion  of  one  "  and  "  only,  becomes  a  smooth 
blank-verse  piece  of  seven,  two  of  which  are  indeed 
hemistichs,  and  three  "  weak-ended,"  but  only  such  as 
are  frequent  in  Shakespeare  — 

"  They  see  the  Indian  drifting,  knife  in  hand, 
His  frail  boat  moored  to  a  floating  isle  —  thick-matted 
With  large-leaved  [and'\  low-creeping  melon-plants 
And  the  dark  cucumber. 

He  reaps  and  stows  them,  drifting,  drifting  :  round  him. 
Round  his  green  harvest-plot,  flow  the  cool  lake-waves, 
The  mountains  ring  them." 

Nor,  perhaps,  though  the  poem  is  a  pretty  one,  will  it 
stand  criticism  of  a  different  kind  much  better.     Such 


LIFE  AND   WORK   TO    1 853.  1 3 

mighty  personages  as  Ulysses  and  Circe  are  scarcely 
wanted  as  mere  bystanders  and  "  supers "  to  an  im- 
aginative young  gentleman  who  enumerates,  somewhat 
promiscuously,  a  few  of  the  possible  visions  of  the  Gods. 
There  is  neither  classical,  nor  romantic,  nor  logical 
justification  for  any  such  mild  effect  of  the  dread  Wine 
of  Circe  :  and  one  is  driven  to  the  conclusion  that  the 
author  chiefly  wanted  a  frame,  after  his  own  fashion,  for 
a  set  of  disconnected  vignettes  like  those  of  Tennyson's 
Palace  of  Art  and  Dream  of  Fair  Wome?i, 

But  if  the  title  poem  is  vulnerable,  there  is  plenty  of 
compensation.     The  opening  sonnet  — 

"  Two  lessons,  Nature,  let  me  learn  of  thee  "  — 

is  perhaps  rather  learnt  from  Wordsworth,  yet  it  does 
not  fail  to  strike  the  note  which  fairly  differentiates 
the  Arnoldian  variety  of  Wordsworthianism  —  the  note 
which  rings  from  Resignation  to  Poor  Matthias,  and 
which  is  a  very  curious  cross  between  two  things  that 
at  first  sight  may  seem  unmarriageable,  the  Words- 
worthian  enthusiasm  and  the  Byronic  despair.  But 
of  this  ^  more  when  we  have  had  more  of  its  examples 
before  us.  The  second  piece  in  the  volume  must,  or 
should,  have  struck  —  for  there  is  very  little  evidence 
that  it  did  strike  —  readers  of  the  volume  as  something 
at  once  considerable  and,  in  no  small  measure,  new. 
Mycerinus,  a.  piece  of  some  120  lines  or  so,  in  thirteen 
six-line  stanzas  and  a  blank-verse  eoda,  is  one  of  those 

1  This  "  undertone,"  as  Mr  Shairp  calls  it. 


14  MATTHEW   ARNOLD. 

characteristic  poems  of  this  century,  which  are  neither 
mere  "copies  of  verses,"  mere  occasional  pieces,  nor 
substantive  compositions  of  the  old  kind,  with  at  least 
an  attempt  at  a  beginning,  middle,  and  end.  They 
attempt  rather  situations  than  stories,  rather  facets  than 
complete  bodies  of  thought,  or  description,  or  character. 
They  supply  an  obvious  way  of  escape  for  the  Romantic 
tendency  which  does  not  wish  to  break  wholly  with  clas- 
sical tradition ;  and  above  all  they  admit  of  indulgence 
in  that  immense  variety  which  seems  to  have  become 
one  of  the  chief  devices  of  modern  art,  attempting  the 
compliances  necessary  to  gratify  modern  taste. 

The  Herodotean  anecdote  of  the  Egyptian  King 
Mycerinus,  his  indignation  at  the  sentence  of  death 
in  six  years  as  a  recompense  for  his  just  rule,  and 
his  device  of  lengthening  his  days  by  revelling  all 
night,  is  neither  an  unpromising  nor  a  wholly  promis- 
ing subject.  The  foolish  good  sense  of  Mr  Toots 
would  probably  observe  —  and  justly  —  that  before  six 
years,  or  six  months,  or  even  six  days  were  over  King 
Mycerinus  must  have  got  very  sleepy ;  and  the  philo- 
sophic mind  would  certainly  recall  the  parallel  of 
Cleobis  and  Biton  as  to  the  best  gift  for  man.  Mr 
Arnold,  however,  draws  no  direct  moral.  The  stanza- 
part  of  the  poem,  the  king's  expostulation,  contains 
very  fine  poetry,  and  "  the  note  "  rings  again  throughout 
it,  especially  in  the  couplet  — 

"And  prayers,  and  gifts,  and  tears,  are  fruitless  all, 
And  the  night  waxes,  and  the  shadows  fall." 


LIFE  AND   WORK  TO    1 85 3.  1 5 

The  blaiik-verse  tail-piece  is  finer  still  in  execution ; 
it  is,  with  the  still  finer  companion-^^^^  of  Sohrab  and 
Rustuin^  the  author's  masterpiece  in  the  kind,  and  it 
is,  hke  that,  an  early  and  consummate  example  of  Mr 
Arnold's  favourite  device  of  finishing  without  a  finish, 
of  'Splaying  out  the  audience,''  so  to  speak,  with 
something  healing  and  reconciling,  description,  simile, 
what  not,  to  relieve  the  strain  of  his  generally  sad 
philosophy  and  his  often  melancholy  themes. 

One  may  less  admire,  despite  its  famous  and  often- 
quoted  line, 

"  Who  saw  life  steadily,  and  saw  it  whole," 

the  sonnet  To  a  Friend,  praising  Homer  and  Epictetus 
and  Sophocles,  for  it  seems  to  some  to  have  a  smatch  of 
priggishness.  Nor  am  I  one  of  those  who  think  very 
highly  of  the  much  longer  Sick  King  in  Bokhara 
which  (with  a  fragment  of  an  Antigone,  whereof  more 
hereafter)  follows,  as  this  sonnet  precedes,  The  Strayed 
Reveller  itself.  There  is  ''the  note,"  again,  and  I  dare- 
say the  orientalism  has  the  exactness  of  colour  on 
which,  as  we  know  from  the  Letters,  Mr  Arnold  prided 
himself.  Yet  the  handling  of  the  piece  seems  to  me 
prolix  and  uncertain,  and  the  drift  either  very  oljscure 
or  somewhat  unimportant.  But  about  the  Shakespeare 
sonnet  which  follows  there  can  be  no  controversy  among 
the  competent.  "  Almost  adequate  "  is  in  such  a  case 
the  highest  praise ;  and  it  must  be  given. 

The  companions  of  this    sonnet  are  respectable,   but 


1 6  MATTHEW   ARNOLD. 

do  not  deserve  much  warmer  words;  and  then  we  turn 
to  a  style  of  poem  remarkably  different  from  anything 
which  the  author  had  yet  published  and  from  most  of 
his  subsequent  work.  It  is  not  unnoteworthy  that  the 
batch  of  poems  called  in  the  later  collected  editions 
Swilzerla?id,  and  completed  at  last  by  the  piece  called 
On  the  Terrace  at  Berne,  appeared  originally  piecemeal, 
and  with  no  indication  of  connection.  The  first  of 
its  numbers  is  here,  To  my  Friends  who  Ridiculed  a 
Tender  Leave-taking.  It  applies  both  the  note  of 
thought  which  has  been  indicated,  and  the  quality  of 
style  which  had  already  disengaged  itself,  to  the  com- 
monest —  the  greatest  —  theme  of  poetry,  but  to  one 
which  this  poet  had  not  yet  tried  —  to  Love.  Let 
it  be  remembered  that  the  thought  has  the  cast  of 
a  strictly  pessimist  quietism  —  that  the  style  aims,  if 
it  aims  at  any  single  thing,  at  the  reproduction  of  the 
simpler  side  of  classicalism,  at  an  almost  prim  and 
quakerish  elegance,  a  sort  of  childlike  grace.  There 
is,  however,  by  no  means  any  great  austerity  in  the 
tone  :  on  the  contrary  the  refrain  — 

*'  Ere  the  parting  kiss  be  dry, 
Quick  !  thy  tablets,  Memory  !  "  — 

approaches  the  luscious.  It  is  not  easy  to  decide,  and 
it  is  perhaps  in  both  senses  impertinent  to  speculate, 
whether  the  "  Marguerite  "  (whose  La  Tour-like  portrait 
is  drawn  in  this  piece  with  such  relish,  and  who  is  so 
l^hilosophically   left   to   her   fate    by   her    lover   on   the 


LIFE   AND   WORK   TO    1 85 3.  1 7 

Terrace  at  Berne  later)  had  any  live  original.  She 
seems  a  little  more  human  in  some  ways  than  most  of 
those  cloud-Junos  of  the  poets,  the  heroines  of  sonnet- 
sequence  and  song-string.  She  herself  has  a  distinct 
touch  of  philosophy,  anticipating  with  nonchalant  resig- 
nation the  year's  severance,  and  with  equally  nonchalant 
anticipation  the  time  when 

"  Some  day  next  year  I  shall  be, 
Entering  heedless,  kissed  by  thee." 

Her  wooer  paints  her  with  gusto,  but  scarcely  with 
ardour ;  and  ends  with  the  boding  note  — 

**  Yet,  if  little  stays  with  man, 
Ah  I  retain  we  all  we  can  !  "  — 

seeming  to  be  at  least  as  doubtful  of  his  own  constancy 
as  of  hers.  Nor  do  we  meet  her  again  in  the  volume. 
The  well-known  complementary  pieces  which  make  up 
Switzerland  were  either  not  written,  or  held  back. 

The  inferior  but  interesting  Modern  Sappho^  almost 
the  poet's  only  experiment  in  "Moore-ish"  method  and 
melody  — 

"  They  are  gone  —  all  is  still !    Foolish  heart,  dost  thou  quiver  ? "  — 

is  a  curiosity  rather  than  anything  else.  The  style  is 
ill  suited  to  the  thought ;  besides,  Matthew  Arnold, 
a  master  at  times  of  blank  verse,  and  of  the  statelier 
stanza,  was  less  often  an  adept  at  the  lighter  and 
more  rushing  lyrical  measures.  He  is  infinitely  more 
at  home  in  the  beautiful   New  Sirens,  which,  for  what 


1 8  MATTHEW  ARNOLD. 

reason  it  is  difficult  to  discover,  he  never  reprinted 
till  many  years  later,  partly  at  Mr  Swinburne's  most 
judicious  suggestion.  The  scheme  is  trochaic,  and  Mr 
Arnold  (deriving  beyond  all  doubt  inspiration  from 
Keats)  was  happier  than  most  poets  with  that  charming 
but  difficult  foot.  The  note  is  the  old  one  of  yearning 
rather  than  passionate  melancholy,  applied  in  a  new 
way  and  put  most  clearly,  though  by  no  means  most 
poetically,  in  the  lines 

"  Can  men  worship  the  wan  features, 
The  sunk  eyes,  the  wailing  tone, 
Of  unsphered,  discrowned  creatures. 

Souls  as  little  godlike  as  their  own  .'' " 

The  answer  is,  "  No,"  of  course ;  but,  as  Mr  Traill 
informed  Mr  Arnold  many  years  later,  we  knew  that 
before,  and  it  is  distressing  to  be  told  it,  as  we  are  a 
little  later,  with  a  rhyme  of  "  dawning  "  and  "  morning." 
Yet  the  poem  is  a  very  beautiful  one  —  in  some  ways 
the  equal  of  its  author's  best  up  to  this  time  ;  at  least 
he  had  yet  done  nothing  except  the  Shakespeare  sonnet 
equal  to  the  splendid  stanza  beginning  — 

"  And  we  too,  from  upland  valleys ;  " 

and  the  cry  of  the  repentant  sirens,  punished  as  they 
liad  sinned  — 

"  *  Come,'  you  say,  *  the  hour?,  are  dreary.'  " 

Yet  the  strong  Tennysonian  influence  (which  the  poet 
rather  ungraciously  kicked  against  in  his  criticism)  show^s 


LIFE  AND   WORIC   TO    1 853.  I9 

itself  here  also ;  and  we  know  perfectly  well  that  the 
good  lines  — 

*'  When  the  first  rose  flush  was  steeping 
All  the  frore  peak's  awful  crown  "  — 

are  but  an  unconscious  reminiscence  of  the  great  ones  — 

"  And  on  the  glimmering  summit  far  withdrawn, 
God  made  himself  an  awful  rose  of  dawn." 

lie  kept  this  level,  though  here  following  not  Tenny- 
son or  Keats  but  Shelley,  in  the  three  ambitious  and 
elaborate  lyrics.  The  Voice,  To  Fausia,  and  Stagirius, 
fine  things,  if  somehow  a  little  suggestive  of  inability 
on  their  author's  part  fully  to  meet  the  demands  of  the 
forms  he  attempts  —  "  the  note,''  in  short,  expressed  practi- 
cally as  well  as  in  theory.  Stagirius  in  particular  wants 
but  a  very  little  to  be  a  perfect  expression  of  the  ob- 
stinate questionings  of  the  century ;  and  yet  wanting  a 
little,  it  wants  so  much  !  Others,  To  a  Gipsy  Child  and 
The  Hays7vater  Boat  (Mr  Arnold  never  reprinted  tliis) 
are  but  faint  Wordsworthian  echoes,  and  thus  we  come 
to  The  Forsaken  Merman. 

It  is,  I  believe,  not  so  "correct"  as  it  once  was  to 
admire  this ;  but  I  confess  indocility  to  correctness,  at 
least  the  correctness  which  varies  with  fashion.  The 
Forsakeri  Merma?i  is  not  a  perfect  poem  —  it  has  lon- 
gueurs, though  it  is  not  long ;  it  has  those  inadequacies, 
those  incompetences  of  expression,  which  are  so  oddly 
characteristic  of  its  author ;  and  his  elaborate  simplicity, 
though  more  at  home  here  than  in  some  other  places, 


20  MATTHEW  ARNOLD. 

occasionally  gives  a  dissonance.  But  it  is  a  great  poem 
—  one  by  itself,  one  which  finds  and  keeps  its  own  place 
in  the  foreordained  gallery  or  museum,  with  which 
every  true  lover  of  poetry  is  provided,  though  he  in- 
herits it  by  degrees.  No  one,  I  suppose,  will  deny  its 
pathos ;  I  should  be  sorry  for  any  one  who  fails  to  per- 
ceive its  beauty.  The  brief  picture  of  the  land,  and 
the  fuller  one  of  the  sea,  and  that  (more  elaborate  still) 
of  the  occupations  of  the  fugitive,  all  have  their  own 
charm.  But  the  triumph  of  the  piece  is  in  one  of  those 
metrical  coups  which  give  the  triumph  of  all  the  greatest 
poetry,  in  the  sudden  change  from  the  slower  move- 
ments of  the  earlier  stanzas  or  strophes  to  the  quicker 
sweep  of  the  famous  conclusion  — 


"  The  salt  tide  rolls  seaward, 

to 


Lights  shine  from  the  town  " 


"  She  left  lonely  for  ever 
The  kings  of  the  sea." 

Here  the  poet's  poetry  has  come  to  its  own. 

In    Uirumque  ParaUcs  sounds  the  note   again,   and 
has  one  exceedingly  fine  stanza :  — 

"  Thin,  thin  the  pleasant  human  noises  grow, 

And  faint  the  city  gleams  ; 
Rare  the  lone  pastoral  huts  —  marvel  not  thou  I 
The  solemn  peaks  but  to  the  stars  are  known, 
But  to  the  stars,  and  the  cold  lunar  beams  ; 
Alone  the  sun  arises,  and  alone 

Spring  the  great  streams." 

But  /xc'sigTiation,  the  last  poem   in    the   book,  goes   far 


LIFE  AND   \VORK  TO    1 85  3.  21 

higher.  Again,  it  is  too  long ;  and  as  is  not  the 
case  in  the  Mer?nanj  or  even  in  The  Strayed  Reveller 
itself,  the  general  drift  of  tlie  poem,  the  allegory  (if 
it  be  an  allegory)  of  the  two  treadings  of  "the  self- 
same road"  with  Fausta  and  so  forth,  is  unnecessarily 
obscure,  and  does  not  tempt  one  to  spend  much 
trouble  in  penetrating  its  obscurity.  But  the  splendid 
passage  beginning  — 

"  The  Poet  to  whose  mighty  heart/' 
and  ending  — 

"  His  sad  lucidity  of  soul," 

has  far  more  interest  than  concerns  the  mere  intro- 
duction, in  this  last  line  itself,  of  one  of  the  famous 
Arnoldian  catchwords  of  later  years.  It  has  far 
more  than  lies  even  in  its  repetition,  with  fuller  de- 
tail, of  what  has  been  called  the  authors  main  poetic 
note  of  half-melancholy  contemplation  of  life.  It 
has,  once  more,  the  interest  of  poetry  —  of  poetical 
presentation,  which  is  independent  of  any  subject  or 
intention,  which  is  capable  of  being  adapted  perhaps 
to  all,  certainly  to  most,  which  lies  in  form,  in  sound, 
in  metre,  in  imagery,  in  language,  in  suggestion  — 
rather  than  in  matter,  in  sense,  in  definite  purpose 
or  scheme. 

It  is  one  of  the  heaviest  indictments  against  the 
criticism  of  the  mid-nineteenth  century  that  this  re- 
markable book  —  the  most  remarkable  first  book  of 
verse   that   appeared   between   Tennyson^s   and    Brown- 


22  MATTHEW   ARNOLD. 

ing's  in  the  early  thirties  and  The  Defence  of  Guine- 
vere in  1858  —  seems  to  have  attracted  next  to  no 
notice  at  all.  It  received  neither  the  ungenerous  and 
purblind,  though  not  wholly  unjust,  abuse  which  in 
the  long-run  did  so  much  good  to  Tennyson  him- 
self, nor  the  absurd  and  pernicious  bleatings  of  praise 
which  have  greeted  certain  novices  of  late  years.  It 
seems  to  have  been  simply  let  alone,  or  else  made 
the  subject  of  quite  insignificant  comments. 

In  the  same  year  (1849)  ^^^  Arnold  was  repre- 
sented in  the  Examiner  of  July  21  by  a  sonnet  to 
the  Hungarian  nation,  which  he  never  included  in 
any  book,  and  which  remained  peacefully  in  the  dust- 
bin till  a  reference  in  his  Letters  quite  recenUy  set 
the  ruthless  reprinter  on  its  track.  Except  for  an 
ending,  itself  not  very  good,  the  thing  is  quite  value- 
less :  the  author  himself  says  to  his  mother,  "  it  is 
not  worth  much."  And  three  years  passed  before  he 
followed  up  his  first  volume  with  a  second,  which 
should  still  more  clearly  have  warned  the  intelligent 
critic  that  here  was  somebody,  though  such  a  critic 
would  not  have  been  guilty  of  undue  hedging  if  he 
had  professed  himself  still  unable  to  decide  whether 
a  new  great  poet  had  arisen  or  not. 

This  volume  was  Empe docks  on  Etna  and  other 
Poems,  [still]  By  A.  London:  Fellowes,  1S52.  It 
contained  two  attempts  —  the  title-piece  and  Tris- 
tram and  Iseiilt — much  longer  and  more  ambitious 
than  anything  that  the   poet   had  yet  done,  and  thirty- 


LIFE  AND   WORK  TO    1 853.  23 

three  smaller  poems,  of  which  two  —  Destiny  and 
Courage  —  were  never  reprmted.  It  was  again  very 
unequal  —  perhaps  more  so  than  the  earlier  volume, 
though  it  went  higher  and  oftener  high.  But  the 
author  became  dissatisfied  with  it  very  shortly  after 
its  appearance  in  the  month  of  October,  and  withdrew 
it  when,  as  is  said,  less  than  fifty  copies  had  been  sold. 
One  may  perhaps  not  impertinently  doubt  whether  the 
critical  reason,  v.  infra  —  in  itself  a  just  and  penetrat- 
ing one,  as  well  as  admirably  expressed  —  which,  in  the 
Preface  of  the  1S53  collection,  the  poet  gave  for  its 
exclusion  (save  in  very  small  part)  from  that  volume 
tells  the  whole  truth.  At  any  rate,  I  think  most 
good  judges  quarrel  with  EmpedodeSj  not  because  the 
situation  is  unmanageable,  but  because  the  poet  has 
not  managed  it.  The  contrast,  in  dramatic  trio,  of 
the  world-worn  and  disappointed  philosopher,  the  prac- 
tical and  rather  prosaic  physician,  and  the  fresh  gifts 
and  unspoilt  gusto  of  the  youthful  poet,  is  neither 
impossible  nor  unpromising.  Perhaps,  as  a  situation, 
it  is  a  little  nearer  than  Mr  Arnold  quite  knew  to 
that  of  Paracelsus^  and  it  is  handled  with  less  force 
if  with  more  clearness  than  Browning's  piece.  But 
one  does  not  know  what  is  more  amiss  with  it  than 
is  amiss  with  most  of  its  author's  longer  pieces  — 
namely,  that  neillier  story  nor  character-drawing  was 
his  forte,  that  the  dialogue  is  too  colourless,  and  that 
though  the  description  is  often  charming,  it  is  seldom 
masterly.     As     before,     there     are     jarring     rhymes  — • 


24  MATTHEW  ARNOLD. 

"school"  and  "oracle,"  "Faun"   and  "scorn."     Em- 

pedocles  himself  is   sometimes   dreadfully    tedious ;  but 

the   part   of    Callicles    throughout   is    lavishly    poetical. 

Not  merely  the  show  passages  —  that  which  the  Roman 

father, 

"  Though  young,  intolerably  severe," 

saved  from  banishment  and  retained  by  itself  in  the  1853 
volume,  as  Cadmus  and  Ilarmonia,  and  the  beautiful 
lyrical  close,  —  but  the  picture  of  the  highest  wooded 
glen  on  Etna,  and  the  Flaying  of  Marsyas,  are  de- 
lightful things. 

Tristram  and  Iseult,  with  fewer  good  patches,  has  a 
greater  technical  interest.  It  is  only  one,  but  it  is  the 
most  remarkable,  of  the  places  where  we  perceive  in  Mr 
Arnold  one  of  the  most  curious  of  the  notes  of  transi- 
tion-poets. They  will  not  frankly  follow  another's  metri- 
cal form,  and  they  cannot  strike  out  a  new  one  for 
themselves.  In  this  piece  the  author  —  most  attractively 
to  the  critic,  if  not  always  quite  satisfactorily  to  the 
reader —  makes  for,  and  flits  about,  half-a-dozen  different 
forms  of  verse.  Now  it  is  the  equivalenced  octosyllable 
of  the  Coleridgean  stamp  rather  than  of  Scott's  or 
Byron's ;  now  trochaic  decasyllabics  of  a  rather  rococo 
kind ;  and  once  at  least  a  splendid  anapaestic  couplet, 
which  catches  the  ear  and  clings  to  the  memory  for  a 
lifetime  — 

"  What  voices  are  these  on  the  clear  night  air  ? 

"What  lights  in  the  court  ?     What  steps  on  the  stair?  " 

But  the    most   interesting   experiment   by   far   is  in  the 


LIFE  AND    WORK  TO    1 853.  2$ 

rhymed  heroic,  which  appears  fragmentarily  in  the  first 
two  parts  and  substantively  in  the  third.  The  interest 
of  this,  which  (one  cannot  but  regret  it)  Mr  Arnold  did 
not  carry  further,  relapsing  on  a  stiff  if  stately  blank 
verse,  is  not  merely  intrinsic,  but  both  retrospective 
and  prospective.  It  is  not  the  ordinary  ''  stopped " 
eighteenth-century  couplet  at  all ;  nor  the  earlier  one  of 
Drayton  and  Daniel.  It  is  the  "enjambed,"  very 
mobile,  and  in  the  right  hands  admirably  fluent  and 
adaptable  couplet,  which  William  Browne  and  Cham- 
berlayne  practised  in  the  early  and  middle  seventeenth 
century,  which  Leigh  Hunt  revived  and  taught  to 
Keats,  and  of  which,  later  than  Mr  Arnold  himself,  Mr 
William  Morris  was  such  an  admirable  practitioner.  Its 
use  here  is  decidedly  happy ;  and  the  whole  of  this  part 
shows  in  Mr  Arnold  a  temporary  Romantic  impulse, 
which  again  we  cannot  but  regret  that  he  did  not  obey. 
The  picture-work  of  the  earlier  hnes  is  the  best  he  ever 
did.  The  figure  of  Iseult  with  the  White  Hands  stands 
out  with  the  right  Prae-Raphaelite  distinctness  and 
charm ;  and  the  story  of  Merlin  and  Vivian,  with  which, 
in  the  manner  so  dear  to  him,  he  diverts  the  attention 
of  the  reader  from  the  main  topic  at  the  end,  is  beauti- 
fully told.  For  attaching  quality  on  something  like  a 
large  scale  I  should  put  this  part  of  Tristram  and  Iseult 
much  above  both  Sohrab  and  Rustum  and  Balder  Dead  ; 
but  the  earlier  parts  arc  not  worthy  of  it,  and  the  whole, 
like  Empedodes,  is  something  of  a  failure,  though  both 
poems  afford  ample  consolation  in  passages. 


26  MATTHEW  ARNOLD. 

The  smaller  pieces,  however,  could  have  saved  the 
volume  had  their  larger  companions  been  very  much 
weaker.  The  Memorial  Verses  on  Wordsworth  (pub- 
lished first  in  Fraser)  have  taken  their  place  once  for 
all.  If  they  have  not  the  poetical  beauty  in  different 
ways  of  Carew  on  Donne,  of  Dryden  on  Oldham, 
even  of  Tickell  upon  Addison,  of  Adonais  above  all, 
of  Wordsworth's  own  beautiful  EffusioJi  on  the  group 
of  dead  poets  in  1834,  they  do  not  fall  far  short 
even  in  this  respect.  And  for  adequacy  of  meaning, 
not  unpoetically  expressed,  they  are  almost  supreme. 
If  Mr  Arnold's  own  unlucky  and  maimed  definition 
of  poetry  as  "  a  criticism  of  life "  had  been  true, 
they  would  be  poetry  in  quintessence  ;  and,  as  it  is, 
they  are  poetry.  ' 

Far  more  so  is  the  glorious  Suvimer  Nighty  which 
came  near  the  middle  of  the  book.  There  is  a  cheer- 
ing doctrine  of  mystical  optimism  which  will  have  it  that 
a  sufficiently  intense  devotion  to  any  ideal  never  fails 
of  at  least  one  moment  of  consummate  realisation  and 
enjoyment.  Such  a  moment  was  granted  to  Matthew 
Arnold  when  he  wrote  A  Summer  Night,  Whether 
that  rather  vague  life-philosophy  of  his,  that  erection 
of  a  melancholy  agnosticism  plus  asceticism  into  a 
creed,  was  anything  more  than  a  not  ungraceful  or 
undignified  will-worship  of  Pride,  we  need  not  here 
argue  out.  But  we  have  seen  how  faithfully  the  note  of 
it  rings  through  the  verse  of  these  years.  And  here  it 
rings  not  only  faithfully,  but  almost  triumphantly.     The 


LIFE  AND   WORK   TO    1 85 3.  27 

lips  are  touched  at  last :  the  eyes  are  thoroughly  opened 
to  see  what  the  lips  shall  speak :  the  brain  almost  uncon- 
sciously frames  and  fills  the  adequate  and  inevitable 
scheme.  And,  as  always  at  these  right  poetic  moments, 
the  minor  felicities  follow  the  major.  The  false  rhymes 
are  nowhere ;  the  imperfect  phrases,  the  little  sham 
simplicities  or  pedantries  hide  themselves ;  and  the  poet 
is  free,  from  the  splendid  opening  landscape  through 
the  meditative  exposition,  and  the  fine  picture  of  the 
shipwreck,  to  the  magnificent  final  invocation  of  the 
"  Clearness  divine  !  " 

His  freedom,  save  oncCy  is  not  so  unquestionably  ex- 
hibited in  the  remarkable  group  of  poems  —  the  future 
constituents  of  the  Switzerlajid  group,  but  still  not 
classified  under  any  special  head  —  which  in  the  orig- 
inal volume  chiefly  follow  Empcdocles^  with  the  batch 
later  called  "  Faded  Leaves "  to  introduce  them.  It 
is,  perhaps,  if  such  things  were  worth  attempting  at  all, 
an  argument  for  supposing  some  real  undercurrent  of 
fact  or  feeUng  in  them,  that  they  are  not  grouped  at 
their  first  appearance,  and  that  some  of  them  are 
perhaps  designedly  separated  from  the  rest.  Even  the 
name  "  Marguerite  "  does  not  appear  in  A  Farewell ; 
though  nobody  who  marked  as  well  as  read,  could  fail 
to  connect  it  with  the  To  my  Friends  of  the  former 
volume.  We  are  to  suppose,  it  would  appear,  that 
the  twelvemonth  has  passed,  and  that  Marguerite's  an- 
ticipation of  th.e  renewed  kiss  is  fulfilled  in  the  first 
stanzas.      But    the     lover's    anticipation,    too,    is    ful- 


28  MATTHEW  ARNOLD. 

filled,  though  as  usual  not  quite  as  he  made  it ;  he 
wearies  of  his  restless  and  yet  unmasterful  passion ; 
he  rather  muses  and  morals  in  his  usual  key  on 
the  "  way  of  a  man  with  a  maid  "  than  complains  or 
repines.  And  then  we  go  off  for  a  time  from  Mar- 
guerite, though  not  exactly  from  Switzerland,  in  the 
famous  "  Obermaim  "  stanzas,  a  variation  of  the  Words- 
worth memorial  lines,  melodious,  but  a  very  little  zw- 
potent  —  the  English  utterance  of  what  Sainte-Beuve,  I 
think,  called  ''the  discouraged  generation  of  1S50." 
Now  mere  discouragement,  except  as  a  passing  mood, 
though  extremely  natural,  is  also  a  little  contemptible  — 
pessimism-and-water,  mere  peevishness  to  the  "  fierce 
indignation,"  mere  whining  compared  with  the  great 
ironic  despair.  As  for  Consolation,  which  in  form  as  in 
matter  strongly  resembles  part  of  the  Strayed  Reveller^  I 
must  say,  at  the  risk  of  the  charge  of  Philistinism,  that  I 
cannot  see  why  most  of  it  should  not  have  been  printed 
as  prose.  In  foct,  it  would  be  a  very  bold  and  astonish- 
ingly ingenious  person  who,  not  knowing  the  original, 
perceived  any  verse-division  in  this  — 

'*  The  bleak,  stern  hour,  whose  severe  moments  I  would  anni- 
hilate, is  passed  by  others  in  warmth,  light,  joy." 

Nor  perhaps  can  very  much  be  said  for  some  of 
the  other  things.  The  sonnet  afterwards  entitled  The 
WorhVs  Triumphs  is  not  strong  ;  The  Second  Best  is  but 
"  a  chain  of  extremelv  valuable  thouejhts  "  ;  Revolution 
a   conceit.      The    Youth   of  Nature  and    The    Youth  of 


LIFE  AND    WORK  TO    1 85 3.  29 

Man  do  but  take  up  less  musically  the  thrcnos  for 
Wordsworth.  But  Morality  is  both  rhyme  and  poetry  ; 
Progress  is  at  least  rhyme ;  and  The  Future ,  though 
rhymeless  again,  is  the  best  of  all  Mr  Arnold's  wayward- 
nesses of  this  kind.  It  is,  however,  in  the  earlier  division 
of  the  smaller  poems  —  those  which  come  between  Em- 
pedocles  and  Trisira?n  —  that  the  interest  is  most  concen- 
trated, and  that  the  best  thing  — better  as  far  as  its  sub- 
ject is  concerned  even  than  the  Siwimer  Alight —  appears. 
For  though  all  does  not  depend  upon  the  subject,  yet  of 
two  poems  equally  good  in  other  ways,  that  which  has 
the  better  subject  will  be  the  better.  Here  we  have  the 
bulk  of  the  *'  Marguerite  "  or  Switzerlafid  poems  —  in 
other  words,  we  leave  the  windy  vagaries  of  mental  in- 
digestion and  come  to  the  real  things  —  Life  and  Love. 

The  River  does  not  name  any  one,  though  the  "  arch 
eyes  "  identify  Marguerite  ;  and  Excuse,  Indifference^  and 
Too  Late  are  obviously  of  the  company.  But  none  of 
these  is  exactly  of  the  first  class.  We  grow  warmer 
with  On  The  Ehi?ie,  containing,  among  other  things, 
the  good  distich  — 

"  Eyes  too  expressive  to  be  blue, 
Too  lovely  to  be  grey  "  ; 

on  which  Mr  Swinburne  gave  a  probably  unconscious 
scholion  as  well  as  variatien  in  his  own  — 

"  Those  eyes,  the  greenest  of  things  blue, 
The  bluest  of  things  grey." 

The    intense    pathos,    which    the    poet    could   rarely 


30  MATTHEW   ARNOLD. 

*'  let   himself  go "    sufficiently   to   reach,    together   with 

the    seventeenth-century   touch   which    in    English   not 

unfrequently    rewards     the    self-sacrifice     necessary    to 

scholarly     poets    in    such     abandonment,     appears    in 

Longing;    The  Lake  takes  up   the  faint  thread  of  story 

gracefully   enough ;    and   Parting  does    the    same    with 

more    importance    in   a    combination,    sometimes    very 

effective,    of   iambic   couplets    and    anapaestic    strophes, 

and  with  a  touch  of  direct  if  not  exalted  nature  in  its 

revelation   of  that  terrible  thing,  retrospective  jealousy, 

in  the  lover.      Woe  to  the  man  who  allows  himself  to 

think  — 

"  To  the  lips  !  ah !  of  others 

Those  lips  have  been  pressed, 
And  others,  ere  I  was, 

Were  clasped  to  that  breast," 

and   who    does   not   at  once   exorcise    the   demon  with 

the   fortunately    all-potent   spell   of  Bocca   bacciata  and 

the  rest !     Absence  and  Destiny  show  him   in  the  same 

Purgatory ;    and    it   is   impossible   to   say   that   he   has 

actually  escaped   in    the    crowning   poem    of  the  series 

—  the  crowning-point  perhaps  of  his  poetry,  the  piece 

beginning 

"  Yes  !  in  the  sea  of  life  enisled." 

It  is  neither  uninteresting  nor  unimportant  that  this 
exquisite  piece,  by  a  man's  admiration  of  which  (for 
there  are  some  not  wholly  lost,  who  do  not  admire 
it)  his  soundness  in  the  Catholic  Faith  of  poetry  may 
be  tested,  perhaps  as  well  as  by  any  other,  has  borne 


LIFE  AND   WORK  TO    1 853.  3 1 

more  than  one  or  two  titles.  It  is  in  the  .1852 
volume,  To  Marguerite :  In  returning  a  volume  of  the 
letters  of  Ortis.  In  1S53  it  became  Isolation,  its  best 
name ;  and  later  it  took  the  much  less  satisfactory 
one  of  To  Marguerite  —  continued y  being  annexed  to 
another. 

Isolation  is  preferable  for  many  reasons ;  not  least 
because  the  actual  ^Marguerite  appears  nowhere  in 
the  poem,  and,  except  in  the  opening  monosyllable, 
can  hardly  be  said  to  be  even  rhetorically  addressed. 
The  poet's  affection  —  it  is  scarcely  passion  —  is  there, 
but  in  transcendence :  he  meditates  more  than  he 
feels.  And  that  function  of  the  riddle  of  the  painful 
earth  which  Lucretius,  thousands  of  years  ago,  put  in 
his  grim  Nequicquafn  !  which  one  of  Mr  Arnold's  own 
contemporaries  formulated  with  less  magnificence  and 
more  popularity,  but  still  with  music  and  truth  in 
Strangers  Yet — here  receives  almost  its  final  poetical 
expression.  The  image  —  the  islands  in  the  sea  —  is 
capitally  projected  in  the  first  stanza;  it  is  exquisitely 
amplified  in  the  second ;  the  moral  comes  with  due 
force  in  the  third ;  and  the  whole  winds  up  with 
one  of  the  great  poetic  phrases  of  the  century  —  one 
of  the  "jewels  five  [literally  five  !]  words  long'"  of  Eng- 
lish verse  —  a  phrase  complete  and  final,  with  epithets  in 
unerring  cumulation  — 

"  The  unplumb'd,  salt,  estranging  sea." 
Human   life^    no    ill   thing   in    itself,    reads    a    little 


32  MATTHEW  ARNOLD. 

weakly  after  Isolation ;  but  Despondency  is  a  pretty 
piece  of  melancholy,  and,  with  a  comfortable  stool, 
will  suit  a  man  well.  In  the  sonnet,  When  I  shall 
be  divorced^  Mr  Arnold  tried  the  Elizabethan  vein 
with  less  success  than  in  his  Shakespeare  piece  ;  and 
Self-Deceptio7i  and  Lines  written  by  a  Death-Bed^ 
with  some  beauty  have  more  monotony.  The  closing 
lines  of  the  last  are  at  the  same  time  the  moral  of 
the  book  and  the  formula  of  the   Arnoldian  "  note  "  — 

"  Calm  's  not  life's  crown,  though  calm  is  well. 
'T  is  all  perhaps  which  man  acquires, 
But  't  is  not  what  our  youth  desires." 

Again,  we  remember  Mr  Traill's  parody  -  remon- 
strance thirty  years  later,  and  again  we  may  think  that 
the  condemnation  which  Mr  Arnold  himself  was  soon 
to  pronounce  upon  E7npedocles  is  rather  disastrously 
far-reaching,  while  even  this  phrase  is  a  boomerang. 
Musical  and  philosophical  despair  is  one  of  the  in- 
numerable strings  of  the  poetic  lyre ;  but  't  is  not 
what  our  youth,  or  our  age  either,  desires  for  a 
monochord. 

The  remarkable  manifesto  just  referred  to  was  not 
long  delayed.  Whatever  may  have  been  his  opinion 
as  to  the  reception  of  the  two  volumes  "by  A,"  he 
made  up  his  mind,  a  year  after  the  issue  and  withdrawal 
of  the  second,  to  put  forth  a  third,  with  his  name, 
and  containing,  besides  a  full  selection  from  the  other 
two,   fresh   specimens   of  the   greatest   importance.     In 


LIFE  AND   WORK   TO    1853.  33 

the  two  former  there  had  been  no  avowed  "  pur- 
pose ■' ;  here,  not  merely  were  the  contents  sifted  on 
principle,  the  important  E)npedocIcs  as  well  as  some 
minor  things  being  omitted :  not  merely  did  some 
of  the  new  numbers,  especially  Sohrab  afid  Rustum^ 
directly  and  intentionally  illustrate  the  poet's  theories, 
but  those  theories  themselves  were  definitely  put  in  a 
Preface,  which  is  the  most  important  critical  document 
issued  in  England  for  something  like  a  generation,  and 
which,  as  prefixed  by  a  poet  to  his  poetry,  admits  no 
competitors  in  English,  except  some  w^ork  of  Dryden's 
and  some  of  Wordsworth's. 

Beginning  with  his  reasons  for  discarding  E?npedocIes^ 
reasons  which  he  sums  up  in  a  sentence,  famous,  but 
too  important  not  to  require  citation  at  least  in  a  note,^ 
he  passes  suddenly  to  the  reasons  which  were  not  his, 
and  of  which  he  makes  a  good  rhetorical  starting-point 
for  his  main  course.  The  bad  critics  of  that  day  had 
promulgated  the  doctrine,  which  they  maintained  till 
a  time  within  the  memory  of  most  men  who  have 
reached  middle  life,  though  the  error  has  since  in  the 
usual    course    given   way   to    others  —  that    "  the    Poet 

^  "  What,  then,  are  the  situations,  from  the  representation  of  which, 
though  accurate,  no  poetical  enjoyment  can  be  derived  ?  They  are 
those  in  which  the|  suffering  finds  no  vent  in  action  ;  in  which  a 
continuous  state  of  mental  distress  is  prolonged,  unrelieved  by  in- 
cident, hope,  or  resistance  ;  in  which  there  is  everything  to  be  en- 
dured, nothing  to  be  done.  In  such  situations  there  is  inevitably  . 
something  morbid,  in  the  description  of  them  something  monotonous.! 
When  they  occur  in  actual  life,  they  are  painful,  not  tragic;  the 
representation  of  them  in  poetry  is  painful  also." 

C 


34  MATTHEW  ARNOLD. 

must  leave  the  exhausted  past  and  draw  his  subjects 
from  matters  of  present  import."  This  was  the  genuine 
*'7}Wj-z'.-all-the-works-of-Thucydides  "  fallacy  of  the  mid- 
nineteenth  century,  the  fine  flower  of  Cobdenism, 
the  heartfelt  motto  of  Philistia — as  Philistia  then  was. 
For  other  times  other  Philistines,  and  Ekron  we  have 
always  with  us,  ready,  as  it  was  once  said,  "  to  bestow  its 
freedom  in  pinchbeck  boxes  "  on  its  elect. 

This  error  Mr  Arnold  has  no  difficulty  in  laying  low 
at  once ;  but  unluckily  his  swashing  blow  carries  him 
with  it,  and  he  falls  headlong  into  fresh  error  himself 
"What,"  he  asks  very  well,  "are  the  eternal  objects  of 
Poetry,  among  all  nations  and  at  all  times  ?  "  And  he 
answers — equally  well,  though  not  perhaps  with  impreg- 
nable logical  completeness  and  accuracy — "  They  are 
actions,  human  actions ;  possessing  an  inherent  interest 
in  themselves,  and  which  are  to  be  communicated  in 
an  interesting  manner  by  the  art  of  the  Poet."  Here 
he  tells  the  truth,  but  not  the  whole  truth  ;  he  should 
have  added  "thoughts  and  feelings"  to  "actions,"  or  he 
deprives  Poetry  of  half  her  realm.  But  he  is  so  far 
sufficient  against  his  Harapha  (for  at  that  date  there 
were  no  critical  Goliaths  about).  Human  action  does 
possess  an  "inherent,"  an  "eternal,"  poetical  interest 
and  capacity  in  itself.  That  interest,  that  capacity,  is 
incapable  of  "  exhaustion  " — nay  (as  Tvlr  Arnold,  though 
with  bad  arguments  as  well  as  good,  urges  later),  it  is,  on 
the  whole,  a  likelier  subject  for  the  poet  when  it  is  old, 
because  it  is  capable  of  being  grasped  and  presented 


LIFE  AND  WORK   TO    1 85 3.  35 

more  certainly.  But  the  defender  hastens  to  indulge  in 
more  than  one  of  those  dangerous  sallies  from  his 
trenches  which  have  been  fatal  to  so  many  heroes.  He 
proclaims  that  the  poet  cannot  "  make  an  intrinsically 
inferior  action  equally  delightful  with  a  more  excellent 
one  by  his  treatment  of  it,''  forgetting  that,  until  the 
action  is  presented,  we  do  not  know  whether  it  is  "  in- 
ferior "  or  not.  He  asks,  "  What  modern  poem  presents 
personages  as  interesting  as  Achilles,  Prometheus,  Cly- 
temnestra,  Dido  ?  "  unsuspicious,  or  perhaps  reckless,  of 
the  fact  that  not  a  few  men,  who  admire  and  know  the 
classics  quite  as  well  as  he  does,  will  cheerfully  take  up 
his  challenge  at  any  weapons  he  likes  to  name,  and  with 
a  score  of  instances  for  his  quartette.  It  is  true  that, 
thanks  to  the  ineptitude  of  his  immediate  antagonists, 
he  recovers  himself  not  ill  by  cleverly  selecting  the 
respectable  Hermann  and  Dorothea,  the  stagy-romantic 
Childe  Harold,  the  creature  called  "Jocelyn,"  and  the 
shadowy  or  scrappy  personages  of  the  Exairsio?i^  to 
match  against  his  four.  But  this  is  manifestly  unfair. 
To  bring  Lamartine  and  Wordsworth  in  as  personage- 
makers  is  only  honest  rhetorically  (a  kind  of  honesty  on 
which  Wamba  or  Launcelot  Gobbo  shall  put  the  gloss  for 
us).  Nay,  even  those  to  whom  Goethe  and  Byron  are 
not  the  ideal  of  modern  poetry  may  retort  that  Mephis- 
topheles — that  even  Faust  himself — is  a  much  more 
"  interesting "  person  than  the  sulky  invulnerable  son 
of  Thetis,  while  Gulnare,  Parisina,  and  others  are  not 
much  worse   than    Dido.     But   these  are  mere  details. 


36  MATTHEW  ARNOLD. 

The  main  purpose  of  the  Preface  is  to  assert  in  the  most 
emphatic  manner  the  AristoteHan  (or  partly  Aristotehan) 
doctrine  that  "  All  depends  on  the  subject,"  and  to  con- 
nect the  assertion  with  a  further  one,  of  which  even  less 
proof  is  offered,  that  "  the  Greeks  understood  this  far 
better  than  we  do,"  and  that  they  were  also  the  unap- 
proachable masters  of  "the  grand  style."  These  posi- 
tions, which,  to  do  Mr  Arnold  justice,  he  maintained 
unflinchingly  to  his  dying  day,  are  supported,  not  exactly 
by  argument,  but  by  a  great  deal  of  ingenious  and 
audacious  illustration  and  variation  of  statement,  even 
Shakespeare,  even  Keats,  being  arraigned  for  their 
wicked  refusal  to  subordinate  "expression"  to  choice 
and  conception  of  subject.  The  merely  Philistine  mod- 
ernism is  cleverly  set  up  again  that  it  may  be  easily 
smitten  down ;  the  necessity  of  Criticism,  and  of  the 
study  of  the  ancients  in  order  to  it,  is  most  earnestly 
and  convincingly  championed ;  and  the  piece  ends  with 
its  other  famous  sentence  about  "  the  wholesome 
regulative  laws  of  Poetry"  and  their  "eternal  enemy, 
Caprice." 

As  Mr  Arnold's  critical  position  will  be  considered 
as  a  whole  later,  it  would  be  waste  of  time  to  say 
very  much  more  of  this  first  manifesto  of  his.  It 
need  only  be  observed  that  he  might  have  been 
already,  as  he  often  was  later,  besought  to  give  some 
little  notion  of  what  "  the  grand  style "  was ;  that, 
true  and  sound  as  is  much  of  the  Preface,  it  is  not 
a   little   exposed   to   the   damaging   retort,    "  Yes :    this 


LIFE   AND   WORK   TO    1 85  3.  37 

is  your  doxy,  and  she  seems  fair  to  you,  no  doubt ; 
but  so  docs  ours  seem  fair  to  us."  Moreover,  the 
"all-depends-on-the-subject "  doctrine  here,  as  always, 
swerves  from  one  fatal  difficulty.  If,  in  what  pleases 
poetically,  poetical  expression  is  always  present,  while 
in  only  some  of  what  pleases  poetically  is  the  subject 
at  the  required  height,  is  it  not  illogical  to  rule 
out,  as  the  source  of  the  poetic  pleasure,  that  which 
is  always  present  in  favour  of  that  which  is  sometimes 
absent  ? 

We  knov>'  from  the  Letters — and  we  should  have 
been  able  to  divine  without  them — that  Sohrab  and 
Rustutn^  the  first  in  order,  the  largest  in  bulk,  and 
the  most  ambitious  in  scheme  of  the  poems  which 
appeared  for  the  first  time  in  the  new  volume,  was 
wTitten  in  direct  exemplification  of  the  theories  of 
the  Preface.  The  theme  is  old,  and  though  not 
"  classical "  in  place,  is  thoroughly  so  in  its  nature, 
being  the  story  of  a  combat  between  a  father  and  a 
son,  who  know  not  each  other  till  too  late,  of  the 
generosity  of  the  son,  of  the  final  triumph  of  the 
father,  of  the  atiagnorisis^  with  the  resignation  of  the 
vanquished  and  the  victor's  despair.  The  medium 
is  blank  verse,  of  a  partly  but  not  wholly  ]\Iiltonic 
stamp,  very  carefully  written,  and  rising  at  the  end 
into  a  really  magnificent  strain,  with  the  famous  pic- 
ture of  "  the  majestic  river "  Oxus  floating  on  regard- 
less of  these  human  v/oes,  to  where  the  stars 
**  Emerge,  and  shine  upon  the  Aral  Sea." 


38  MATTHEW  ARNOLD. 

Even  here,  it  is  true,  the  Devil's  Advocate  may  ask 
whether  this,  Hke  the  Mycerifius  close,  that  of  Em- 
pedodes,  and  others,  especially  one  famous  thing,  to 
which  we  shall  come  presently,  is  not  more  of  a 
purple  tail -patch,  a  "tag,"  a  "curtain,"  than  of  a 
legitimate  and  integral  finale.  It  is  certain  that 
Mr  Arnold,  following  the  Greeks  in  intention  no 
doubt,  if  not  quite  so  closely  as  he  intended,  was 
very  fond  of  these  "curtains" — these  little  rhetorical 
reconciliations  and  soothings  for  the  reader.  But  this 
is  the  most  in  place  of  any  of  them,  and  certainly 
the  noblest  iirade.  that  its  author  has  left. 

Most  of  the  new  poems  here  are  at  a  level  but 
a  little  lower  than  this  part  of  Sohfab  and  Rustum^ 
while  some  of  them  are  even  above  it  as  wholes. 
Philomela  is  beautiful,  in  spite  of  the  obstinate  will- 
worship  of  its  unrhymed  Pindaric  :  the  Stanzas  to 
the  Memory  of  Edward  QuilUnan  are  really  pathetic, 
though  slightly  irritating  in  their  "  sweet  simplicity " ; 
and  if  Thekla^s  Ansiver  is  nothing  particular.  The 
Neckafi  nothing  but  a  weaker  doublet  of  the  Merman^ 
A  Dream  is  noteworthy  in  itself,  and  as  an  outlier 
of  the  Marguerite  group.  Then  we  have  three  things, 
of  which  the  first  is,  though  unequal,  great  at  the 
close,  while  the  other  two  rank  with  the  greatest 
things  Mr  Arnold  ever  did.  These  are  The  Church 
of  Brou^   Reqidescat,   and    The  Scholar-Gipsy. 

If,  as  no  critic  ever  can,  the  critic  could  thoroughly 
discover   the   secret   of  the    inequality   of   Tlie    Church 


LIFE   AND   \YORK    TO    1 85 3.  39 

of  Brou^  he  might,  hke  the  famous  pedant,  "put.  away" 
Mr  Arnold  "fully  conjugated  in  his  desk."  The  poem 
is  in  theme  and  scheme  purely  Romantic,  and  "nine- 
teenth century"  in  its  looking  back  to  a  simple  and 
pathetic  story  of  the  Middle  Age — love,  bereavement, 
and  pious  resignation.  It  is  divided  into  three  parts. 
The  first,  in  trochaic  ballad  metre,  telling  the  story, 
is  one  of  the  poet's  weakest  things.  You  may  oft 
see  as  good  in  Helen  Maria  Williams  and  the  Delia 
Cruscans.  The  second,  describing  the  church  where 
the  duke  and  duchess  sleep,  in  an  eight-line  stanza 
of  good  fLishion,  is  satisfactory  but  nothing  more. 
And  then  the  third,  after  a  manner  hardly  paralleled 
save  in  Crashaw's  Flaming  Hearty  breaks  from  twaddle 
and  respectable  verse  into  a  rocket  -  rush  of  heroic 
couplets,  scattering  star-showers  of  poetry  all  over  and 
round  the  bewildered  reader.  It  is  artifice  rather 
than  art,  perhaps,  to  lisp  and  drawl,  that,  when  you 
do  speak  out,  your  speech  may  be  the  more  effective. 
But  hardly  anything  can  make  one  quarrel  with  such 
a  piece  of  poetry  as  that  beginning — 

*'  So  rest,  for  ever  rest,  O  princely  pair!" 

and  ending — 

"The  rustle  of  the  eternal  rain  of  Love." 

On  the  other  hand,  in  Requiescat  there  is  not  a  false 
note,  unless  it  be  the  dubious  word  "vasty"  in  the 
last  line ;    and  even  that  may  shelter   itself  under   the 


40  MATTHEW  ARNOLD. 

royal  mantle  of  Shakespeare.  The  poet  has  here 
achieved  what  he  too  often  fails  in,  the  triple  union  of 
simplicity,  pathos,  and  (in  the  best  sense)  elegance. 
The  dangerous  repetitions  of  "roses,  roses,"  "tired, 
tired,"  &c.,  come  all  right ;  and  above  all  he  has  the  flexi- 
bility and  quiver  of  metre  that  he  too  often  lacks.  His 
trisyllabic  interspersions  —  the  leap  in  the  vein  that 
makes  iambic  verse  alive  and  passionate — are  as  happy 
as  they  can  be,  and  the  relapse  into  the  uniform  dis- 
syllabic gives  just  the  right  contrast.  He  must  be 
Tj  OrjpLov  rj  6eo^ — and  whichever  he  be,  he  is  not  to  be 
envied — who  can  read  Requiescat  for  the  first  or  the 
fiftieth  time  without  mist  in  the  eyes  and  without  a 
catch  in  the  voice. 

But  the  greatest  of  these — the  greatest  by  far — is  The 
Scholar- Gipsy.  I  have  read — and  that  not  once  only, 
nor  only  in  the  works  of  unlettered  and  negligible 
persons — expressions  of  irritation  at  the  local  Oxonian 
colour.  This  is  surely  amazing.  One  may  not  be  an 
Athenian,  and  never  have  been  at  Athens,  yet  be  able 
to  enjoy  the  local  colour  of  the  Phcedrus,  One  may 
not  be  an  Italian,  and  never  have  been  in  Italy,  yet 
find  the  Divina  Cojnniedia  made  not  teasing  but  in- 
finitely vivid  and  agreeable  by  Dante's  innumerable  re- 
ferences to  his  country,  Florentine  and  general.  That 
some  keener  thrill,  some  nobler  gust,  may  arise  in 
the  reading  of  the  poem  to  those  who  have  actually 
watched 

"Tlie  line  of  festal  light  in  Christ  Church  Hall" 


LIFE   AND   WORK    TO    1 85  3.  4I 

from  above  Hinksey,  who  know  the  Fyfield  dm  in 
May,  and  have  *' trailed  their  fingers  in  the  stripHng 
Thames  "  at  Bablockhithe, — may  be  granted.  But  in 
the  name  of  Bandusia  and  of  Gargarus,  what  offence 
can  these  things  give  to  any  worthy  wight  who  by  his 
ill  luck  has  not  seen  them  with  eyes  ?  The  objection 
is  so  apt  to  suggest  a  suspicion,  as  illiberal  almost  as 
itself,  that  one  had  better  not  dwell  on  it. 

Let  us  hope  that  there  are  after  all  few  to  whom  it 
has  presented  itself — that  most,  even  if  they  be  not  sons 
by  actual  matriculation  of  Oxford,  feel  that,  as  of  other 
"  Cities  of  God,"  they  are  citizens  of  her  by  spiritual 
adoption,  and  by  the  welcome  accorded  in  all  such  cities 
to  God's  children.  But  if  the  scholar  had  been  an 
alumnus  of  Timbuctoo,  and  for  Cumnor  and  Godstow 
had  been  substituted  strange  places  in  -iva  and  -ja^  I 
cannot  think  that,  even  to  those  who  are  of  Oxford,  the 
intrinsic  greatness  of  this  noble  poem  would  be  much 
affected,  though  it  might  lose  a  separable  charm.  For 
it  has  everything — a  sufficient  scheme,  a  definite  mean- 
ing and  purpose,  a  sustained  and  adequate  command 
of  poetical  presentation,  and  passages  and  phrases  of 
the  most  exquisite  beauty.  Although  it  begins  as  a 
pastoral,  the  mere  traditional  and  conventional  frippery 
of  that  form  is  by  no  means  so  prominent  in  it  as  in 
the  later  (and,  I  think,  less  consummate)  companion  and 
sequel  T/iyrsis.  With  hardly  an  exception,  the  poet 
throughout  escapes  in  his  phraseology  the  two  main 
dangers  which  so  constantly  beset  him — too  great  stiff- 


42  MATTHEW  ARNOLD. 

ness  and  too  great  simplicity.  His  "  Graian  "  personi- 
fication is  not  overdone ;  his  landscape  is  exquisite ;  the 
stately  stanza  not  merely  sweeps,  but  sways  and  swings, 
with  as  much  grace  as  state.  And  therefore  the  Arnold- 
ian  *'  note  " — the  special  form  of  the  maladie  die  siecle 
which,  as  we  have  seen,  this  poet  chooses  to  celebrate 
— acquires  for  once  the  full  and  due  poetic  expression 
and  music,  both  symphonic  and  in  such  special 
clangours  as  the  never-to-be-too-often-quoted   distich — 

"  Still  nursing  the  unconquerable  hope, 
Still  clutching  the  inviolable  shade  " — 

v/hich  marks  the  highest  point  of  the  composition. 
The  only  part  on  which  there  may  be  some  difference 
between  admirers  is  the  final  simile  of  the  Tyrian  trader. 
This  finishes  off  the  piece  in  nineteen  lines,  of  which 
the  poet  was — and  justly — proud,  which  are  quite  ad- 
mirable by  themselves,  but  which  cannot  perhaps  pro- 
duce any  very  clear  evidences  of  right  to  be  where  they 
are.  No  ingenuity  can  work  out  the  parallel  between 
the  ''uncloudedly  joyous"  scholar  who  is  bid  avoid  the 
palsied,  diseased  enfants  dti  sikie,  and  the  grave  Tyrian 
who  was  indignant  at  the  competition  of  the  merry 
Greek,  and  shook  out  more  sail  to  seek  fresh  markets. 
It  is,  once  more,  simply  an  instance  of  Mr  Arnold's 
fancy  for  an  end-note  of  relief,  of  cheer,  of  pleasant 
contrast.  On  his  own  most  rigid  principles,  I  fear  it 
would  have  to  go  as  a  mere  sewn-on  patch  of  purple : 
on  mine,   I   welcome  it  as   one   of  the  most   engaging 


LIFE   AND   WORK    TO    1S53.  43 

passages  of  a  poem  delightful  throughout,  and.  at  its 
very  best  the  equal  of  anything  that  was  written  in  its 
author's  lifetime,  fertile  as  that  was  in  poetry. 

He  himself,  though  he  was  but  just  over  thirty  when 
this  poem  appeared,  and  though  his  life  was  to  last  for 
a  longer  period  than  had  passed  since  his  birth  to  1853, 
was  to  make  few  further  contributions  to  poetry  itself. 
The  reasons  of  this  comparative  sterility  are  interesting, 
and  not  quite  so  obvious  as  they  may  appear.  It  is 
true,  indeed, — it  is  an  arch-truth  which  has  been  too 
rarely  recognised, — that  something  like  complete  idle- 
ness, or  at  any  rate  complete  freedom  from  regular 
mental  occupation,  is  necessary  to  the  man  who  is  to  do 
poetic  work  great  in  quality  and  in  quantity  at  once. 
The  hardest  occupation  —  and  Mr  Arnold's,  though 
hard,  was  not  exactly  that — will  indeed  leave  a  man 
sufficient  time,  so  far  as  mere  time  is  concerned,  to  turn 
out  as  much  verse  as  the  most  fertile  of  poets  has  ever 
produced.  But  then  that  will  scarcely  do.  The  Muses 
are  feminine — and  it  has  been  observed  that  you  cannot 
make  up  even  to  the  most  amiable  and  reasonable  of  that 
sex  for  refusing  to  attend  to  her  at  the  minute  when  she 
wants  you^  by  devoting  even  hours,  even  days,  when  you 
are  at  leisure  for  her.  To  put  the  thing  more  seriously, 
though  perhaps  not  more  truly,  the  human  brain  is  not 
so  constituted  that  you  can  ride  or  drive  or  "train  "  from 
school  to  school,  examining  as  you  go,  for  half-a-dozen 
or  half-a-score  hours  a-day,  or  that  you  can  devote  the 
same  time  to  the  v/eariest  and  dreariest  of  all  businesses, 


44  MATTHEW   ARNOLD. 

the  reading  of  hundreds  of  all  but  identical  answers  to 
the  same  stock  questions,  and  yet  be  fresh  and  fertile 
for  imaginative  composition.  The  nearest  contradictory 
instances  to  this  proposition  are  those  of  Scott  and 
Southey,  and  they  are,  in  more  ways  than  one  or  two, 
very  damaging  instances — exceptions  which,  in  a  rather 
horrible  manner,  do  prove  the  rule.  To  less  harassing, 
and  especially  less  peremptory,  work  than  Mr  Arnold's, 
as  well  as  far  more  literary  in  kind,  Scott  sacrificed  the 
minor  literary  graces,  Southey  immolated  the  choicer 
fruits  of  genius  which  he  undoubtedly  possessed  the 
power  of  producing;  and  both  "died  from  the  top 
downward." 

But  there  was  something  more  than  this.  Mr 
Arnold's  poetic  ambition,  as  we  have  seen,  did  not  aim 
at  very  long  and  elaborate  works.  His  forte  was  the 
occasional  piece  —  which  might  still  suggest  itself  and 
be  completed — which,  as  we  shall  see,  did  sometimes 
suggest  itself  and  was  completed — in  the  intervals,  the 
holidays,  the  relaxations  of  his  task.  And  if  these  lucid 
and  lucent  intervals,  though  existent,  were  so  rare,  their 
existence  and  their  rarity  together  suggest  that  some- 
thing more  than  untoward  circumstance  is  to  blame  for 
the  Hict  that  they  did  not  show  themselves  oftener.  A 
full  and  constant  tide  of  inspiration  is  imperative  ;  it 
will  not  be  denied ;  it  may  kill  the  poet  if  he  cannot  or 
will  not  give  vent  to  it,  but  it  will  not  be  patient  of 
repression  —  quietly  content  to  appear  now  and  then, 
even  on  such  occasions  as  the  deaths  of  a  Clough  and 


LIFE   AND  WORK   TO    1 85 3.  45 

a  Stanley.  Nor  is  it  against  charity  or  liberality,  while 
it  is  in  the  highest  degree  consonant  with  reason  and 
criticism,  lo  infer  that  Mr  Arnold's  poetic  vein  was  not 
very  full-blooded,  that  it  was  patient  of  refusal  to  in- 
dulge it,  that  his  poetry,  in  nearly  the  happiest  of  his 
master's  phrases,  was  not  exactly  "inevitable,"  despite 
the  exquisiteness  of  its  quality  on  occasion. 

It  is  fortunate  for  the  biographer  that  this  earliest 
part  of  Mr  Arnold's  life  is  so  fertile  in  poetry,  for 
otherwise,  in  the  dearth  of  information,  it  would  be 
a  terribly  barren  subject.  The  thirty  years  of  life 
yield  us  hardly  twenty  pages  of  letters,  of  which  the 
first,  with  its  already  cited  sketch  of  Laleham,  is  per- 
haps the  most  interesting.  At  the  Trafalgar  Square 
riots  of  March  1848  the  writer  is  convinced  that 
"the  hour  of  the  hereditary  peerage  and  eldest  son- 
ship  and  immense  properties  has  struck";  sees  "a 
wave  of  more  than  American  vulgarity,  moral,  intel- 
lectual, and  social,  preparing  to  break  over  us " ;  and 
already  holds  that  strange  delusion  of  his  that  "the 
French  are  the  most  civilised  of  European  peoples." 
He  develops  this  on  the  strength  of  "  the  intelligence 
of  their  idea-moved  classes "  in  a  letter  to  his  sister ; 
meets  Emerson  in  April ;  goes  to  a  Chartist  "  con- 
vention," and  has  a  pleasant  legend  for  Miss  Martineau 
that  the  late  Lord  Houghton  "refused  to  be  sworn  in 
as  a  special  constable,  that  he  might  be  free  to  as- 
sume the  post  of  President  of  the  Republic  at  a 
moment's    notice."      He    continues    to    despair    of   his 


46  MATTHEW  ARNOLD. 

country  as  hopelessly  as  the  Tuxford  waiter ;  ^  finds 
Bournemouth  "  a  very  stupid  place "  —  which  is  dis- 
tressing ;  it  is  a  stupid  place  enough  now,  but  it  was 
not  then  :  "a  great  moorland  covered  with  furze  and 
low  pine  coming  down  to  the  sea "  could  never  be 
that — and  meets  Miss  Bronte,  "past  thirty  and  plain, 
with  expressive  grey  eyes  though."  The  rest  w^e  must 
imagine. 

^  "The  Tuxford   waiter  desponds  exactly  as  you  do." — Sychiey 
Smith  to  Jeffrey. 


47 


CHAPTER    II. 

LIFE    FROM    1851-62 SECOND    SERIES    OF    POEMS 

MEROPE ON   TRANSLATING   HOMER, 

We  must  now  return  a  little  and  give  some  account  of 
Mr  Arnold's  actual  life,  from  a  period  somewhat  before 
that  reached  at  the  end  of  the  last  chapter.  The  ac- 
count need  not  be  long,  for  the  life,  as  has  been  said, 
was  not  in  the  ordinary  sense  eventful ;  but  it  is  neces- 
sary, and  can  be  in  this  chapter  usefully  interspersed 
with  an  account  of  his  work,  which,  for  nine  of  the 
eleven  years  we  shall  cover,  was,  though  interesting,  of 
much  less  interest  than  that  of  those  immediately  be- 
fore and  those  immediately  succeeding. 

One  understands  at  least  part  of  the  reason  for  the 
gradual  drying  up  of  his  poetic  vein  from  a  sentence  of 
his  in  a  letter  of  1858,  when  he  and  his  wife  at  last  took 
a  house  in  Chester  Square :  "  It  will  be  something  to 
unpack  one's  portmanteau  for  the  first  time  since  I  was 
married,  nearly  seven  years  ago."  "Something,"  in- 
deed ;  and  one's  only  wonder  is  how  he,  and  still  more 
Mrs  Arnold  (especially  as  they  now  had  three  children), 


48  MATTHEW   AkNOLD. 

could  have  endured  the  other  thing  so  long.  There  is 
no  direct  information  in  the  Letters  as  to  the  reason  of 
this  nomadic  existence,  the  only  headquarters  of  which 
appear  to  have  been  the  residence  of  Mrs  Arnold's 
father,  the  judge,  in  Eaton  Place,  with  flights  to  friends' 
houses  and  to  lodgings  at  the  places  of  inspection  and 
others,  especially  Dover  and  Brighton.  And  guesswork 
is  nowhere  more  unprofitable  than  in  cases  where  private 
matters  of  income,  taste,  and  other  things  are  concerned. 
But  it  certainly  would  appear,  though  I  have  no  positive 
information  on  the  subject,  that  in  the  early  days  of 
State  interference  with  education  "  My  Lords  "  managed 
matters  with  an  equally  sublime  disregard  of  the  com- 
fort of  their  officials  and  the  probable  efficiency  of  the 
system.-^ 

^  The  mystery  is  partly  explained,  in  a  fashion  of  no  little  bio- 
graphical importance,  by  the  statement  in  Mr  Arnold's  first  general 
report  for  the  year  1S52,  that  his  district  included  Lincoln,  Notting- 
ham, Derby,  Stafford,  Salop,  Hereford,  Worcester,  Warwick, 
Leicester,  Rutland  and  Midlands,  Gloucester,  Monmouth,  all  South 
Wales,  most  of  North  Wales,  and  some  schools  in  the  East  and 
West  Ridings.  This  apparently  impossible  range  had  its  monstrosity 
reduced  by  the  limitation  of  his  inspectorship  to  Nonconformist 
schools  of  other  denominations  than  the  Roman  Catholic,  especially 
Wesleyan  and  the  then  powerful  "  British  "  schools.  As  the  schools 
multiplied  the  district  was  reduced,  and  at  last  he  had  Westminster 
only  ;  but  the  exclusion  of  Anglican  and  Roman  Catholic  schools 
remained  till  1870.  And  it  is  impossible  not  to  connect  the  some- 
what exaggerated  place  which  the  Dissenters  hold  in  his  social  and 
political  theories  (as  well  as  perhaps  some  of  his  views  about  the 
"  Philistine  ")  with  these  associations  of  his.  We  must  never  forget 
that  for  nearly  twenty  years  Mr  Arnold  worked  in  the  shadow,  not 
of  Barchester  Towers,  but  of  Salem  Chapel. 


185 1- 1 862.  49 

Till  I  noticed  the  statement  quoted  opposite,  I  was 
quite  unable  to  construct  any  reasonable  theory  from 
such  a  passage  as  that  in  a  letter  of  December  1852^  and 
from  others  which  show  us  Mr  Arnold  in  Lincolnshire, 
in  Shropshire,  and  in  the  eastern  counties.  Even  with 
the  elucidation  it  seems  a  shockingly  bad  system.  One 
doubts  whether  it  be  worse  for  an  inspector  or  for  the 
school  inspected  by  him,  that  he  should  have  no  oppor- 
tunity for  food  from  breakfast  to  four  o'clock,  when  he 
staves  off  death  by  inviting  disease  in  the  shape  of  the 
malefic  bun ;  for  him  or  for  certain  luckless  pupil- 
teachers  that,  after  dinner,  he  should  be  "  in  for  [them] 
till  ten  o'clock."  With  this  kind  of  thing  when  on  duty, 
and  no  home  when  off  it,  a  man  must  begin  to  appreci- 
ate the  Biblical  passages  about  partridges,  and  the  wings 
of  a  dove,  and  so  forth,  most  heartily  and  vividly  long 
before  seven  years  are  out,  more  particularly  if  he  be  a 
man  so  much  given  to  domesticity  as  was  Matthew 
Arnold. 

However,  it  was,  no  doubt,  not  so  bad  as  it  looks. 
They  say  the  rack  is  not,  though  probably  no  one  would 
care  to  try.  There  were  holidays ;  there  was  a  large 
circle  of  hospitable  family  friends,  and  strangers  were 
only  too  anxious  to  welcome  (and  perhaps  to  propitiate) 
Her  Majesty's  Inspector.     The  agreeable  anomalies  of 

^  "  I  have  papers  sent  me  to  look  over  which  will  give  me  to  the 
20th  of  January  in  London  without  moving,  then  for  a  week  to 
Huntingdonshire  schools,  then  for  another  lo  London,  .  .  .  and 
then  Birmingham   for  a  month." 

D 


50  MATTHEW  ARNOLD. 

the  British  legal  system  (which,  let  Dickens  and  other 
grumblers  say  what  they  like,  have  made  many  good 
people  happy  and  only  a  few  miserable)  allowed  Mr 
Arnold  for  many  years  to  act  (sometimes  while  simul- 
taneously inspecting)  as  his  father-in-law's  Marshal  on 
circuit,  with  varied  company  and  scenery,  little  or  noth- 
ing to  do,  a  handsome  fee  for  doing  it,  and  no  worse 
rose-leaf  in  the  bed  than  heavy  dinners  and  hot  port 
wine,  even  this  being  alleviated  by  "  the  perpetual  haunch 
of  venison." 

For  the  rest,  there  are  some  pleasing  miscellaneous 
touches  in  the  letters  for  these  years,  and  there  is  a 
certain  liveliness  of  phrase  in  them  which  disappears 
in  the  later.  It  is  pleasant  to  find  Mr  Arnold  on 
his  first  visit  to  Cambridge  (where,  like  a  good  Words- 
worthian,  he  wanted  above  all  things  to  see  the  statue 
of  Newton)  saying  what  all  of  us  say,  "  I  feel  that 
the  Middle  Ages,  and  all  their  poetry  and  impressive- 
ness,  are  in  Oxford  and  not  here."  In  one  letter — 
written  to  his  sister  "  K  "  (Mrs  Forster)  as  his  critical 
letters  usually  are — we  find  three  noteworthy  criticisms 
on  contemporaries,  all  tinged  with  that  slight  want  of 
cordial  appreciation  which  characterises  his  criticism 
of  this  kind  throughout  (except,  perhaps,  in  the  case 
of  Browning).  The  first  is  on  Alexander  Smith  —  it 
was  the  time  of  the  undue  ascension  of  the  Life- 
Dravia  rocket  before  its  equally  undue  fall.  "  It  can 
do  me  no  good  [an  odd  phrase]  to  be  irritated  with 
that   young   man,    who   certainly   has   an   extraordinary 


1S51-1S62.  5t 

faculty,  although  I  think  he  is  a  phenomenon  of  a 
very  dubious  character."  The  second,  harsher  but 
more  definite,  is  on  Villette.  "  Why  is  Villeite  disagree- 
able? Because  the  writer's  mind  [it  is  worth  remem- 
bering that  he  had  met  Charlotte  Bronte  at  Miss  Mar- 
tineau's]  contains  nothing  but  hunger,  rebellion,  and 
rage,  and  therefore  that  is  all  she  can  in  fact  put  into 
her  book.  No  fine  writing  can  hide  this  thoroughly, 
and  it  will  be  fatal  to  her  in  the  long-run."  The  Fates 
were  kinder  :  and  i**Iiss  Bronte's  mind  did  contain  some- 
thing besides  these  ugly  things.  But  it  was  her  special 
weakness  that  her  own  thoughts  and  experiences  were 
insufficiently  mingled  and  tempered  by  a  wider  know- 
ledge of  life  and  literature.  The  third  is  on  My  Novel, 
which  he  says  he  has  "  read  with  great  pleasure,  though 
Buhver's  nature  is  by  no  means  a  perfect  one  either, 
which  makes  itself  felt  in  his  book ;  but  his  gush,  his 
better  humour,  his  abundant  materials,  and  his  mel- 
lowed constructive  skill  —  all  these  are  great  things." 
One  would  give  many  pages  of  the  Letters  for  that  naif 
admission  that  "gush"  is  "a  great  thing." 

A  little  later  (May  1853),  all  his  spare  time  is  being 
spent  on  a  poem,  which  he  thinks  by  far  the  best  thing 
he  has  yet  done,  to  wit,  Sohrab  and  I\iistiim.  And 
he  "never  felt  so  sure  of  himself  or  so  really  and  truly 
at  ease  as  to  criticism."  He  stays  in  barracks  at  the 
depot  of  the  17th  Lancers  with  a  brother-in-law,  and 
we  regret  to  find  that  "  Death  or  Glory "  manners  do 
not  please  him.     The  instance  is  a  cornet  spinning  his 


52  MATTHEW  ARNOLD. 

rings  on  the  table  after  dinner.  "  College  does  civilise 
a  boy,"  he  ejaculates,  which  is  true — always  providing 
that  it  is  a  good  college.  Yet,  with  that  almost  uncon- 
scious naturalness  which  is  particularly  noticeable  in 
him,  he  is  much  dissatisfied  with  Oxford — thinks  it  (as 
we  all  do)  terribly  fallen  off  since  his  days.  Perhaps  the 
infusion  of  Dissenters'  sons  (it  is  just  at  the  time  of  the 
first  Commission  in  1854)  may  brace  its  flaccid  sinews, 
though  the  middle-class,  he  confesses,  is  abominably  dis- 
agreeable. He  sees  a  good  deal  of  this  poor  middle- 
class  in  his  inspecting  tours,  and  decides  elsewhere 
about  the  same  time  that  "  of  all  dull,  stagnant,  un- 
edifying  entourages^  that  of  middle-class  Dissent  is  the 
stupidest."  It  is  sad  to  find  that  he  thinks  women 
utterly  unfit  for  teachers  and  lecturers ;  but  Girton 
and  Lady  Margaret's  may  take  comfort,  it  is  "  no 
natural  incapacity,  but  the  fault  of  their  bringing-up." 
With  regard  to  his  second  series  of  Poems  (v.  infra) 
he  thinks  Balder  will  "consolidate  the  peculiar  sort 
of  reputation  he  got  by  Sohrab  and  Rustum  ; "  and  a 
little  later,  in  April  1856,  we  have  his  own  opinion 
of  himself  as  a  poet,  whose  charm  is  "  literalness  and 
simplicity."  Mr  Ruskin  is  also  treated — with  less  ap- 
preciation than  one  could  wish. 

The  second  series  just  mentioned  was  issued  in  1855, 
a  second  edition  of  the  first  having  been  called  for  the 
year  before.  It  contained,  like  its  predecessor,  such  of 
his  earlier  work  as  he  chose  to  republish  and  had  not 
yet   republished,   chiefly   from   the   Empcdocles  volume. 


1S51-1862.  53 

But  Empedocks  itself  was  only  represented  by  some 
scraps,  mainly  grouped  as  The  Harp-Player  o?i  Etna. 
Faded  Leaves^  grouped  with  an  addition,  here  appear : 
Stagtrius  is  called  Desire^  and  the  Stanzas  in  Memory 
of  the  Author  of  Obernia?in  now  become  Obermafi?i 
simply.  Only  two  absolutely  new  poems,  a  longer 
and  a  shorter,  appear :  the  first  is  Balder  Dead^  the 
second  Separation,  the  added  number  of  Faded  Leaves. 
This  is  of  no  great  value.  Balder  is  interesting,  though 
not  extremely  good.  Its  subject  is  connected  with 
that  of  Gray's  Descent  of  Odin^  but  handled  much  more 
fully,  and  in  blank-verse  narrative  instead  of  ballad 
form.  The  story,  like  most  of  those  in  Norse  myth- 
ology, has  great  capabilities ;  but  it  may  be  questioned 
whether  the  Greek-Miltonic  chastened  style  which  the 
poet  affects  is  well  calculated  to  bring  them  out.  The 
death  of  Nanna,  and  the  blind  fratricide  Hoder,  are 
touchingly  done,  and  Hermod's  ride  to  Hela's  realm 
is  stately.  But  as  a  whole  the  thing  is  rather  dim  and 
tame. 

Mr  Arnold's  election  to  the  Professorship  of  Poetry  at 
Oxford  (May  1857)  was  a  really  notable  event,  not  merely 
in  his  own  career,  but  to  some,  and  no  small,  extent  in 
the  history  of  English  literature  during  the  nineteenth 
century.  The  post  is  of  no  great  value.  I  remember 
the  late  Sir  Francis  Doyle,  who  was  Commissioner  of 
Customs  as  well  as  Professor,  saying  to  me  once  with  a 
humorous  melancholy,  "  Ah  !  Eau  de  Cologne  pays  ffutck 
better  than  Poetry !  "     But  its  duties  are  far  from  heavy, 


54  MATTHEW  ARNOLD. 

and  can  be  adjusted  pretty  much  as  the  holder  pleases. 
And  as  a  position  it  is  unique.  It  is,  though  not  of 
extreme  antiquity,  the  oldest  purely  literary  Professorship 
in  the  British  Isles  ;  and  it  remained,  till  long  after  Mr 
Arnold's  time,  the  only  one  of  the  kind  in  the  two  great 
English  Universities.  In  consequence  partly  of  the 
regulation  that  it  can  be  held  for  ten  years  only — 
nominally  five,  with  a  practically  invariable  re-election 
for  another  five  —  there  is  at  least  the  opportunity, 
which,  since  Mr  Arnold's  own  time,  has  been  gener- 
ally taken,  of  maintaining  and  refreshing  the  distinc- 
tion of  the  occupant  of  the  chair.  Before  his  time 
there  had  been  a  good  many  undistinguished  pro- 
fessors, but  Warton  and  Keble,  in  their  different  ways, 
must  have  adorned  even  a  Chair  of  Poetry  even  in 
the  University  of  Oxford.  Above  all,  the  entire  (or 
almost  entire)  freedom  of  action  left  to  the  Professor 
should  have,  and  in  the  case  of  Keble  at  least  had 
already  had,  the  most  stimulating  effect  on  minds  cap- 
able of  stimulation.  For  the  Professor  of  Poetry  at 
Oxford  is  neither,  like  some  Professors,  bound  to  the 
chariot  -  wheels  of  examinations  and  courses  of  set 
teaching,  nor,  like  others,  has  he  to  feel  that  his 
best,  his  most  original,  efforts  can  have  no  interest, 
and  hardly  any  meaning,  for  all  but  a  small  circle  of 
experts.  His  field  is  illimitable ;  his  expatiation  in  it 
is  practically  untrammelled.  It  is  open  to  all ;  full  of 
flowers  and  fruits  that  all  can  enjoy ;  and  it  only  de- 
pends  on   his   own   choice    and    his    own    literary  and 


I85I-I862. 


55 


intellectual  powers  whether  his  prelections  shall  take 
actual  rank  as  literature  with  the  very  best  of  that 
other  literature,  with  the  whole  of  which,  by  custom, 
as  an  extension  from  poetry,  he  is  at  liberty  to  deal. 
In  the  first  century  of  the  chair  the  custom  of  delivering 
these  Prelections  in  Latin  had  been  a  slight  hamper — 
indeed  to  this  day  it  prevents  the  admirable  work  of 
Keble  from  being  known  as  it  should  be  known.  But 
this  was  now  removed,  and  Mr  Arnold,  whose  reputa- 
tion (it  could  hardly  be  called  fame  as  yet)  was  already 
great  with  the  knowing  ones,  had  not  merely  Oxford 
but  the  English  reading  world  as  audience. 

And  he  had  it  at  a  peculiarly  important  time,  to  the 
importance  of  which  he  himself,  in  this  very  position,  was 
not  the  least  contributor.  Although  the  greatest  writers 
of  the  second  period  of  the  century — Tennyson,  Brown- 
ing, Carlyle,  Thackeray — had,  in  all  cases  but  the  last,  a 
long,  and  in  the  two  first  a  very  long  and  a  wonderfully 
fruitful  career  still  before  them,  yet  the  phase  to  which 
they  belonged  was  as  a  dominant  phase  at  its  height,  and 
as  a  crescent  was  beginning  to  give  place  to  another. 
Within  a  few  years — in  most  cases  within  a  few  months 
— of  Mr  Arnold's  installation,  The  Defence  of  Guinevere 
and  FitzGerald's  Omar  Khayyam  heralded  fresh  forms  of 
poetry  which  have  not  been  superseded  yet ;  The  Origin 
of  Species  and  Essays  and  Revieivs  announced  changed 
attitudes  of  thought ;  the  death  of  Macaulay  removed 
the  last  writer  who,  modern  as  he  was  in  some  ways,  and 
popular,  united  popularity  with  a  distinctly  eighteenth- 


56  MATTHEW   ARNOLD. 

century  tcne  and  tradition  ;  the  death  of  Leigh  Hunt 
removed  the  last  save  Landor  (always  and  in  all  things 
an  outsider)  of  the  great  Romantic  generation  of  the  first 
third  of  the  century ;  The  Ordeal  of  Richard  Feverel 
started  a  new  kind  of  novel. 

The  division  which  Mr  Arnold,  both  by  office  and 
taste,  was  called  to  lead  in  this  newly  levied  army,  was 
not  far  from  being  the  most  important  of  all ;  and  it  was 
certainly  that  of  all  which  required  the  most  thorough 
reformation  of  staff,  morale^  and  tactics.  The  English 
literary  criticism  of  1 830-1 860,  speaking  in  round  num- 
bers, is  curiously  and  to  this  day  rather  unintelligibly 
bad.  There  is,  no  doubt,  no  set  of  matters  in  which  it 
is  less  safe  to  generalise  than  in  matters  literary,  and 
this  is  by  no  means  the  only  instance  in  which  the 
seemingly  natural  anticipation  that  a  period  of  great 
criticism  will  follow  a  period  of  great  creation  is  falsified. 
But  it  most  certainly  is  falsified  here.  The  criticism  of 
the  great  Romantic  period  of  179 8- 1830  was  done  for  it 
by  itself,  and  in  some  cases  by  its  greatest  practitioners, 
not  by  its  immediate  successors.  The  philosophic  as 
well  as  poetical  intuition  of  Coleridge ;  the  marvellous 
if  capricious  sympathy  and  the  more  marvellous 
phrase  of  Lamb ;  the  massive  and  masculine  if  not 
always  quite  trustworthy  or  well  -  governed  intellect  of 
Hazlitt,  had  left  no  likes  behind.     Two  survivors  of  this 

^  There  are  persons  who  would  spell  this  moral ;  but  I  am  not 
writing  French,  and  in  Eni^lish  the  practice  of  good  writers  from 
Chesterfield  downwards  is  my  authority. 


1851-1862.  57 

great  race,  Leigh  Hunt  and  De  Quincey,  were  indeed 
critics,  and  no  inconsiderable  ones  ;  but  the  natural  force 
of  both  had  long  been  much  abated,  and  both  had  been 
not  so  much  critics  as  essayists ;  the  tendency  of  Hunt 
to  flowery  sentimentality  or  familiar  chat,  and  that  of 
De  Quincey  to  incessant  divergences  of  "rigmarole," 
being  formidable  enemies  to  real  critical  competence. 
The  greatest  prosemen — not  novelists — of  the  genera- 
tion now  closing,  Carlyle  and  Macaulay,  were  indeed 
both  considerable  critics.  But  the  shadow  of  death  in 
the  one  case,  the  "  shadow  of  Frederick  "  in  the  other, 
had  cut  short  their  critical  careers  :  and  presumptuous 
as  the  statement  may  seem,  it  may  be  questioned  whether 
either  had  been  a  great  critic — in  criticism  pure  and 
simple — of  literature. 

What  is  almost  more  important  is  that  the  average 
literary  criticism  of  William  IV. 's  reign  and  of  the 
first  twenty  years  of  her  present  Majesty's  was  exceed- 
ingly bad.  At  one  side,  of  course,  the  work  of  men  like 
Thackeray,  who  were  men  of  genius  but  not  critics  by 
profession,  or  in  some  respects  by  equipment,  escapes 
this  verdict.  At  the  other  were  men  (very  few  of  them 
indeed)  like  Lockhart,  who  had  admirable  critical  quali- 
fications, but  had  allowed  certain  theories  and  predilec- 
tions to  harden  and  ossify  within  them,  and  who  in 
some  cases  had  not  outgrown  the  rough  uncivil  ways 
of  the  great  revolutionary  struggle.  Between  these  the 
average  critic,  if  not  quite  so  ignorant  of  literature  as 
a  certain   proportion  of  the  immensely  larger  body  of 


58  MATTHEW  ARNOLD. 

reviewers  to-day,  was  certainly  even  more  blind  to  its 
general  principles.  Such  critical  work  as  that  of  Phillips, 
long  a  favourite  pen  on  the  Times,  and  enjoying  (I  do  not 
know  with  how  much  justice)  the  repute  of  being  the 
person  whom  Thackeray's  Thutider  and  Small  Beer  has 
gibbeted  for  ever,  excites  amazement  nowadays  at  its 
bland  but  evidently  sincere  ignoring  of  the  very  rudi- 
ments of  criticism.  I  do  not  know  that  even  in  the  most 
interesting  remains  of  George  Brimley  (who,  had  fate 
spared  him,  might  have  grown  into  a  great  as  he  already 
was  a  good  critic)  we  may  not  trace  something  of  the 
same  hopeless  amateurishness,  the  same  uncertainty  and 
"  wobbling  "  between  the  expression  of  unconnected  and 
unargued  likes  and  dislikes  concerning  the  matter  of  the 
piece,  and  real  critical  considerations  on  its  merits  or 
demerits  of  scheme  and  form. 

Not  for  the  first  time  help  came  to  us  Trojans  Grata 
ab  urbe.  Of  the  general  merits  of  French  literary  criti- 
cism it  is  possible  to  entertain  a  somewhat  lower  idea 
than  that  which  (in  consequence  of  the  very  circum- 
stances with  which  we  are  now  dealing)  it  has  been 
for  many  years  fashionable  in  England  to  hold.  But 
between  1830  and  i860  the  French  had  a  very  strong 
critical  school  indeed  —  a  school  whose  scholars  and 
masters  showed  the  daemonic,  or  at  least  prophetic, 
inspiration  of  Michelet,  the  milder  and  feebler  but  still 
inspiring  enthusiasm  of  Quinct,  the  academic  clearness 
and  discipline  of  Villemain  and  Nisard,  the  Lucianic 
wit  of  M<5rimce,  the  matchless  appreciation  of  Gautier, 


1S51-1862.  59 

ahdj  above  all,  the  great  new  critical  idiosyncrasy  of 
I  Sainte-Beuve.  Between  these  men  there  were  the  widest 
possible  differences,  not  merely  of  personal  taste  and 
genius,  but  of  literary  theory  and  practice.  But  where 
they  all  differed  quite  infinitely  from  the  lower  class  of 
English  critics,  and  favourably  from  all  but  the  highest 
in  their  happiest  moments,  was  in  a  singular  mixture  of 
scholarship  and  appreciation.  Even  the  most  Romantic 
of  them  usually  tried  to  compare  the  subject  with  its 
likes  in  his  own  and  even,  to  some  extent,  in  other 
literatures ;  even  the  most  Classical  acknowledged,  to 
some  extent,  that  it  was  his  duty  to  appreciate,  to 
understand,  to  grasp  the  case  of  the  victim  before 
ordering  him  off  to  execution. 

In  the  practice  of  Sainte-Beuve  himself,  these  two 
acknowledgments  of  the  duty  of  the  critic  embraced 
each  other  in  the  happiest  union.  The  want  of  en- 
thusiasm which  has  been  sometimes  rather  sillily  charged 
against  him,  comes  in  reality  to  no  more  than  this 
— that  he  is  too  busy  in  analysing,  putting  together 
again,  comparing,  setting  things  in  different  lights  and 
in  different  companies,  to  have  much  time  for  dithy- 
rambs. And  the  preference  of  second-  to  first-class  sub- 
jects, which  has  been  also  urged,  is  little  more  than  the 
result  of  the  fact  that  these  processes  are  more  telling, 
more  interesting,  and  more  needed  in  the  case  of  the 
former  than  in  the  case  of  the  latter.  Homer,  ^^schylus, 
Lucretius,  Dante,  Shakespeare  will  always  make  their 
own  way  with  all  fit  readers  sooner  or  later:  it  is  not  so 


60  MATTHEW  ARNOLD. 

with  Meleager  or  Macrobius  or  Marmontel,  with  William 
Langland  or  with  Thomas  Love  Peacock. 

But  Sainte-Beuvc  must  not  carry  us  too  far  from  Mr 
Arnold,  all  important  as  was  the  influence  of  the  one 
upon  the  other.  It  is  enough  to  say  that  the  new  Pro- 
fessor of  Poetry  (who  might  be  less  appetisingly  but 
more  correctly  called  a  Professor  of  Criticism)  had  long 
entertained  the  wish  to  attempt,  and  now  had  the  means 
of  effecting,  a  reform  in  English  criticism,  partly  on 
Sainte-Beuve's  own  lines,  partly  on  others  which  he  had 
already  made  publicly  known  in  his  famous  Preface,  and 
in  some  later  critical  writings,  and  which  he  was  for  the 
rest  of  his  life  always  unflinchingly  to  champion,  some- 
times rather  disastrously  to  extend. 

Still  it  has  always  been  held  that  this  chair  is  not 
merely  a  chair  of  criticism  ;  and  Mr  Arnold  lodged  a 
poetical  diploma-piece  in  the  shape  of  Merope.  This 
was  avowedly  written  as  a  sort  of  professorial  manifesto 
— a  document  to  show  what  the  only  Professor  of 
Poetry  whom  England  allowed  herself  thought,  in  theory 
and  practice,  of  at  least  dramatic  poetry.  It  was,  as 
was  to  be  expected  from  the  author's  official  position 
and  his  not  widespread  but  well-grounded  reputation, 
much  less  neglected  than  his  earlier  poetry  had  been. 
He  even  tells  us  that  "it  sells  well";  but  the  reviewers 
were  not  pleased.  The  AihefKBum  review  is  "  a  choice 
specimen  of  style,"  and  the  Spectator  "of  argumentation"; 
the  Saturday  Review  is  only  "  deadly  prosy,"  but  none 
were  exactly  favourable  till  G.  H.  Lewes  in  The  Leader 


1851-1S62.  6i 

was  "very  gratifying."  Private  criticism  was  a  little 
kinder.  The  present  Archbishop  of  Canterbury  (to 
whom,  indeed,  Mr  Arnold  had  just  given  "  a  flaming 
testimonial  for  Rugby")  read  it  *'wilh  astonishment  at 
its  goodness,"  a  sentence  which,  it  may  be  observed, 
is  a  little  double-edged.  Kingsley  (whom  the  editor  of 
the  Letters  good-naturedly  but  perhaps  rather  super- 
fluously reintroduces  to  the  British  public  as  "author 
of  The  Saints'  Tragedy  and  other  poems  ")  was  "  very 
handsome."  Froude,  though  he  begs  the  poet  to  "dis- 
continue the  line,"  was  not  uncomplimentary  in  other 
ways.  His  own  conclusion,  from  reviews  and  letters 
together,  is  pretty  plainly  put  in  two  sentences,  that  he 
"  saw  the  book  was  not  going  to  take  as  he  wished," 
and  that  "  she  [Merope]  is  more  calculated  to  inaugu- 
rate my  professorship  with  dignity  than  to  move  deeply 
the  present  race  of  hiinuuisy  Let  us  see  what  "she" 
is  actually  like. 

It  is  rather  curious  that  the  story  of  Merope  should 
have  been  so  tempting  as,  to  mention  nothing  else, 
Maffei's  attempt  in  Italian,  Voltaire's  in  French,  and 
this  of  Mr  Arnold's  in  English,  show  it  to  have  been 
to  modern  admirers  and  would-be  practitioners  of  the 
Classical  drama  :  and  the  curiosity  is  of  a  tell-tale  kind. 
For  the  fact  is  that  the  do7ink  is  very  much  more  of  the 
Romantic  than  of  the  Classical  description,  and  offers 
much  greater  conveniences  to  the  Romantic  than  to  the 
Classical  practitioner.  With  minor  variations,  the  story 
as  generally  dramatised  is  this.     Merope,  the  widov/ed 


62  MATTHEW  ARNOLD. 

queen  of  the  murdered  Heraclid  Crcsphontes,  has  saved 
her  youngest  son  from  the  murderer  and  usurper,  Poly- 
phontes,  and  sent  him  out  of  the  country.  When  he 
has  grown  up,  and  has  secretly  returned  to  Messenia  to 
take  vengeance,  Polyphontes  is  pressing  Merope  to  let 
bygones  be  bygones  and  marry  him,  so  as  to  reconcile 
the  jarring  parties  in  the  State.  /Epytus,  the  son,  to 
facilitate  his  reception,  represents  himself  as  a  messenger 
charged  to  bring  the  news  of  his  own  death ;  and 
Merope,  hearing  this  and  believing  the  messenger  to 
be  also  the  assassin,  obtains  access  to  the  chamber 
where  he  is  resting  after  his  journey,  and  is  about  to 
murder  her  own  sleeping  son  when  he  is  saved  by  the 
inevitable  anag7iorisis.  The  party  of  Cresphontes  is 
then  secretly  roused.  /Epytus,  at  the  sacrifice  which 
the  tyrant  holds  in  honour  of  the  news  of  his  rival's 
death,  snatches  the  sacrificial  axe  and  kills  Polyphontes 
himself,  and  all  ends  well. 

There  is,  of  course,  a  strong  dramatic  moment  here ; 
but  I  cannot  think  the  plot  by  any  means  an  ideal  one 
for  classical  tragedy.  At  any  rate  the  Aristotelian  con- 
ditions— the  real  ones,  not  the  fanciful  distortions  of 
sixteenth-seventeenth  century  criticism — are  very  ill  satis- 
fied. There  is  bloodshed,  but  there  is  no  tragic  blood- 
shed, as  there  would  have  been  had  Merope  actually 
killed  her  son.  The  arresting  and  triumphant  "grip" 
of  the  tragic  misfortunes  of  Qldipus  and  Orestes,  the 
combination  of  the  course  of  fate  and  the  a/xaprux  of 
the  individual,  is  totally  absent.     The  wooing  of  Merope 


1851-1S62.  63 

by  Polyphontes  is  not  so  much  preposterous  as  insig- 
nificant, though  ^^oltaire,  by  a  touch  of  modernism,  has 
rescued  it  or  half-rescued  it  from  this  most  terrible  of 
limbos.  The  right  triumphs,  no  doubt ;  but  who  cares 
whether  it  does  or  not  ?  And  Mr  Arnold,  with  the 
heroic  obstinacy  of  the  doctrinaire,  has  done  nothing  to 
help  the  effect  of  a  scheme  in  itself  sufficiently  uninspir- 
ing to  the  modern  reader.  When  he  was  at  work  upon 
the  piece  he  had  "  thought  and  hoped "  that  it  would 
have  what  Buddha  called  "  the  character  of  Fixity,  that 
true  sign  of  the  law."  A  not  unfriendly  critic  might 
have  pointed  out,  with  gloomy  forebodings,  that  a  sign 
of  law  is  not  necessarily  a  sign  of  poetry,  and  that,  as 
a  prophet  of  his  own  had  laid  it  down,  poetry  should 
"transport"  not  "fix."  At  any  rate,  it  is  clear  to  any 
one  who  reads  the  book  that  the  author  was  in  a  mood 
of  deliberate  provocation  and  exaggeration  —  not  a 
favourable  mood  for  art.  The  quiet  grace  of  Sophocles 
is  perhaps  impossible  to  reproduce  in  English,  but  Mr 
Arnold's  verse  is  more  than  quiet,  it  is  positively  tame. 
The  dreary  tirades  of  Polyphontes  and  Merope,  and 
their  snip-snap  stichomythia^  read  equally  ill  in  English. 
Mr  Swinburne,  who  has  succeeded  where  Mr  Arnold 
failed,  saw  by  a  true  intuition  that,  to  equal  the  effect 
of  the  Greek  chorus,  full  English  lyric  with  rhyme  and 
musical  sweep  was  required.  IMr  Arnold  himself,  as 
might  have  been  expected  from  his  previous  experi- 
ments in  unrhymed  Pindarics,  has  given  us  strophes  and 
antistrophes  most  punctiliously  equivalent  in  syllables ; 


64  MATTHEW  ARNOLD. 

but   sometimes  with   hardly   any,  and   never  with  very 

much,  vesture  of  poetry  about  them.      It  is  absolutely 

preposterous  to  suppose  that  the  effect  on  a  Greek  ear 

of  a  strophe  even  of  Sophocles  or  Euripides,  let  alone 

the   great  Agamemnonian   choruses,   was   anything   like 

the  effect  on  an  English  ear  of  such  wooden  stuff  as 

this  : — 

"  Three  brothers  roved  the  field, 
And  to  two  did  Destiny 
Give  the  thrones  that  they  conquer'd, 
But  the  third,  what  delays  him 
From  his  unattained  crown  ?  " 

But  Mr  Arnold  would  say  "This  is  your  unchaste 
modern  love  for  passages  and  patches.  Tell  me  how 
I  managed  this  worthy  action  ? "  To  which  the  only 
answer  can  be,  "  Sir,  the  action  is  rather  uninteresting. 
Save  at  one  moment  you  have  not  raised  the  interest 
anywhere,  and  you  have  certainly  not  made  the  most 
of  it  there." 

The  fact  is,  that  very  few  even  of  thorough -going 
Arnoldians  have  had,  or,  except  merely  as  "  fighting  a 
prize,"  could  have  had,  much  to  say  for  Merope.  The 
author  pleads  that  he  only  meant  "  to  give  people  a 
specimen  of  the  world  created  by  the  Greek  imagina- 
tion." In  the  first  place,  one  really  cannot  help  (with 
the  opening  speech  of  the  Prometheus^  and  the  close  of 
the  Eufnenides^  and  the  whole  of  the  Agavieiimim  in  one's 
mind)  saying  that  this  is  rather  hard  on  the  Greeks. 
And  in  the  second  place,  what  a  curious  way  of  setting 
about  the  object,  when  luckily  specimens  of  the  actual 


1851-1862.  65 

*' world"  so  "created,"  not  mere  fas tiches  and  plaster 
models  of  them,  are  still  to  be  had,  and  of  the  very 
best  !  But  the  fact  is,  thirdly,  that  Mr  Arnold,  as  all 
men  so  often  do,  and  as  he  not  very  seldom  did,  was 
clearly  trying  not  so  much  to  extol  one  thing  as  to 
depreciate  another.  Probably  in  his  heart  of  hearts 
(which  is  generally  a  much  wiser  heart  than  that  accord- 
ing to  which  the  mouth  speaks  and  the  pen  writes)  he 
knew  his  failure.  At  any  rate,  he  never  attempted  any- 
thing of  the  kind  again,  and  Merope,  that  queen  of 
plaster,  remains  alone  in  his  gallery,  with,  as  we  see 
in  other  galleries,  merely  some  disjecta  me?fibra — "  Frag- 
ment of  an  Antigone,*'  "  P>agment  of  a  Dejaneira^^ 
grouped  at  her  feet.  In  the  definitive  edition  in- 
deed, she  is  not  with  these  but  with  Effipedocles  071 
Etna,  a  rather  unlucky  contrast.  For  Empedodes,  if 
very  much  less  deliberately  Greek  than  Merope,  is  very 
much  better  poetry,  and  it  is  almost  impossible  that  the 
comparison  of  the  two  should  not  suggest  to  the  reader 
that  the  attempt  to  be  Greek  is  exactly  and  precisely 
the  cause  of  the  failure  to  be  poetical.  Mr  Arnold  had 
forgotten  his  master's  words  about  the  oikeia  hedone. 
The  pleasure  of  Greek  art  is  one  thing — the  pleasure 
of  English  poetry  another. 

His  inaugural  lecture,  "  On  the  Modern  Element 
in  Literature,"  was  printed  many  years  afterwards  in 
Macmillan's  Magazine  for  P'ebruary  1869;  and  this 
long  hesitation  seems  to  have  been  followed  by  an 
even    longer  repentance,    for    the   piece   was   never   in- 

£ 


66  MATTHEW   ARNOLD. 

eluded  in  any  one  of  his  volumes  of  essays.  But 
the  ten  years  of  his  professorship  are,  according  to 
the  wise  parsimony  of  the  chair,  amply  represented 
by  the  two  famous  little  books  —  0?t  Tra?tslating 
Ho7?ier^  which,  with  its  supplementary  "  Last  Words," 
appeared  in  1861-62,  and  On  the  Study  of  Celtic 
Literature^  which  appeared  at  the  termination  of  his 
tenure  in  1867.  It  may  be  questioned  whether  he 
ever  did  anything  of  more  influence  than  these  books, 
this  being  due  partly  to  the  fashion  of  their  publica- 
tion —  which,  in  the  latter  case  at  least,  applied  the 
triple  shock  of  lecture  at  the  greatest  of  English 
literary  centres,  of  magazine  article,  and  of  book  — 
and  partly  to  the  fact  that  they  were  about  subjects 
in  which  a  real  or  a  factitious,  a  direct  or  an  indirect, 
interest  was  taken  by  almost  every  one.  Every  edu- 
cated person  knew  and  cared  something  (or  at  least 
would  not  have  liked  to  be  supposed  not  to  care  and 
know  something)  about  Homer ;  very  few  educated 
persons  knew  anything  about  Celtic  literature.  But 
in  these  later  lectures  he  put  in  a  more  popular  and 
provocative  form  than  that  of  his  Fre7ich  Eton  (see 
next  chapter)  that  mixture  of  literary,  political,  social, 
and  miscellaneous  critique  of  his  countrymen  for 
which  he  was  thenceforward  best  known  ;  and  which, 
if  it  brought  down  some  hard  knocks  from  his  adver- 
saries, and  perhaps  was  not  altogether  a  healthy  mixture 
for  liimself,  could  at  least  not  be  charged  by  any 
reasonable  person  with  lack  of  piquancy  and  actuahty. 


1851-1862.  6/ 

Both  books  are,  and,  despite  some  drawbacks  of 
personal  and  ephemeral  allusion,  always  will  be,  in- 
teresting ;  and  both  had,  perhaps  even  more  than  the 
Essays  in  Criticism  themselves,  a  stimulating  effect 
upon  English  men  of  letters  which  can  hardly  be 
overvalued.  It  may  indeed  be  said  without  paradox 
that  they  owe  not  a  little  of  their  value  to  their  faults ; 
but  they  owe  a  great  deal  more  to  their  merits. 

The  faults  are  apparent  enough  even  in  the  first 
series,  which  falls  to  be  noticed  in  this  chapter;  yet 
it  is  really  difficult  to  say  when  a  more  important 
book  of  English  criticism  had  appeared.  Dryden's 
Essay  of  Dramatic  Poesy,  Johnson's  Lives  at  their 
frequent  best,  Coleridge's  Biographia  Literaria,  are 
greater  things ;  but  hardly  the  best  of  them  was  in 
its  day  more  "  important  for  us''  To  read  even  the 
best  of  that  immediately  preceding  criticism  of  which 
something  has  been  said  above  —  nay,  even  to  recur 
to  Coleridge  and  Hazlitt  and  Lamb  —  and  then  to 
take  up  On  Translatijig  Homer,  is  to  pass  to  a  critic 
with  a  far  fuller  equipment,  with  a  new  method, 
with  a  style  of  his  own,  and  with  an  almost  entirely 
novel  conception  of  the  whole  art  of  criticism.  For 
the  first  time  (even  Coleridge  with  much  wider  read- 
ing had  not  co-ordinated  it  from  this  point  of  view) 
we  find  the  two  great  ancient  and  the  three  or  four 
great  modern  literatures  of  Europe  taken  synoptically, 
used  to  illustrate  and  explain  each  other,  to  point  out 
each  other's  defects  and  throw  up  each  other's  merits. 


68  MATTHEW   ARNOLD. 

Almost  for  the  first  time,  too,  we  have  ancient  Htera- 
ture  treated  more  or  less  like  modern  —  neither  from 
the  merely  philological  point  of  view,  nor  with  refer- 
ence to  the  stock  platitudes  and  traditions  about  it. 
The  critic  is  not  afraid  of  doctrines  and  general 
principles — in  fact,  he  is  rather  too  fond  of  them — 
but  his  object  is  anything  rather  than  mere  arid 
deduction  and  codification.  He  has  the  aesthetic 
sense  as  thoroughly  as  Hazlitt  and  Lamb,  but  without 
the  wilfulness  of  either,  or  at  least  with  a  different 
kind  of  wilfulness  from  that  of  either.  Finally,  in 
one  of  the  numerous  ways  in  which  he  shows  that 
his  subject  is  alive  to  him,  he  mixes  it  up  with  the 
queerest  personalities  and  sudden  zigzags,  with  all 
manner  of  digressions  and  side  -  flings.  And  last  of 
all,  he  has  that  new  style  of  which  we  spoke — a  style 
by  no  means  devoid  of  affectation  and  even  trick, 
threatening,  to  experienced  eyes,  the  disease  of  man- 
nerism, but  attractive  in  its  very  provocations,  almost 
wholly  original,  and  calculated,  at  least  while  it  retains 
its  freshness,  to  drive  what  is  said  home  into  the 
reader's  mind  and  to  stick  it  there. 

The  faults,  we  said,  both  critical  and  non  -  critical, 
are  certainly  not  lacking ;  and  if  they  were  not  partly 
excused  by  the  author's  avowedly  militant  position, 
might  seem  sometimes  rather  grave.  Whatever  may 
have  been  the  want  of  taste,  and  even  the  want  of 
sense,  in  the  translation  of  F.  W.  Newman,  it  is  almost 
sufficient    to    say    that    they   were    neither   greater    nor 


1851-1862.  69 

less  than  might  have  been  expected  from  a  person 
who,  if  the  most  scholarly  of  eccentrics,  was  also  the 
most  eccentric  even  of  English  scholars.  It  is  diffi- 
cult not  to  think  that  Mr  Arnold  makes  too  much 
of  them  and  refers  too  frequently  to  them.  Such 
"  iteration  "  is  literally  "  damnable  "  :  it  must  be  con- 
demned as  unfair,  out  of  place,  out  of  taste,  and  even 
not  distantly  approaching  that  lack  of  urbanity  with 
which  Mr  Arnold  was  never  tired  of  reproaching  his 
countrymen.  Another  translator,  Mr  Wright,  was  in- 
deed needlessly  sensitive  to  Mr  Arnold's  strictures ; 
but  these  strictures  themselves  were  needlessly  severe. 
It  is  all  very  well  for  a  reviewer,  especially  if  he  be 
young  and  anonymous,  to  tell  a  living  writer  that  his 
book  has  "  no  reason  for  existing " ;  but  chairs  of 
literature  are  not  maintained  by  universities  that  their 
occupants  may,  in  relation  to  living  persons,  exercise 
the  functions  of  young  anonymous  reviewers.  It  may 
indeed  be  doubted  whether  these  occupants  should, 
except  in  the  most  guarded  way,  touch  living  persons 
at  all. 

Critically  too,  as  well  as  from  the  point  of  view  of 
manners,  the  Lectures  on  Traiislating  Homer  are  open 
to  not  a  few  criticisms.  In  the  first  place,  the  as- 
sumptions are  enormous,  and,  in  some  cases  at  least, 
demonstrably  baseless.  One  of  Mr  Arnold's  strongest 
points,  for  instance,  not  merely  against  Mr  Newman 
but  against  Homeric  translators  generally,  is  concerned 
with  the  renderings  of  the  Homeric  compound  adjec- 


70  MATTHEW   ARNOLD. 

tives,  especially  the  stock  ones — koruthaiolos^  merops, 
and  the  rest.  The  originals,  he  is  never  weary  of 
repeating,  did  not  strike  a  Greek  and  do  not  strike 
a  Greek  scholar  as  out  of  the  way ;  the  English 
equivalents  do  so  strike  an  English  reader.  Now  as 
to  the  Greeks  themselves,  we  know  nothing  :  they 
have  left  us  no  positive  information  on  the  sub- 
ject. But  if  (which  is  no  doubt  at  least  partly  true) 
koruthaiolos  and  dolichoskion  do  not  strike  us,  who 
have  been  familiar  with  Greek  almost  as  long  as  we 
can  remember,  as  out  of  the  way,  is  that  an  argu- 
ment? Most  of  us,  I  suppose,  at  about  nine  or  ten 
years  old,  some  no  doubt  a  little  or  a  good  deal 
earlier,  learnt  these  words  as  part  of  the  ordinary 
Greek  that  was  presented  to  us,  just  as  much  as  kai 
and  ara ;  but  if  we  had  learnt  Greek  as  we  learn 
English,  beginning  with  quite  ordinary  words,  would 
it  be  so?  I  think  not;  nor  would  it  be  so  if  people 
began  Greek  at  a  later  and  more  critical  stage  of 
their  education. 

It  is  also  true  that  the  book  is  full  of  that  exceed- 
ingly arbitrary  and  unproved  assertion,  of  that  rather 
fanciful  terminology,  of  those  sometimes  questionable 
aesthetic  obiter  dicta,  of  which,  from  first  to  last,  Mr 
Arnold  was  so  prolific.  When  he  talks  about  the 
mysterious  "grand  style,"  and  tells  us  that  Milton 
can  never  be  affected,  we  murmur,  ^' De  <^istibus /'^ 
and  add  mentally,  "Though  Milton  is  the  greatest 
of  affected    writers,    Milton    is,   after    Comus   at    least, 


1851-1862.  yi 

never  anything  else  ! "  When  he  tells  us  again  that 
at  that  moment  (1861)  "English  literature  as  a  living 
intellectual  instrument  ranks  after  the  literatures  of 
France  and  Germany,"  we  remember  that  at  the  time 
France  possessed  perhaps  only  one  writer,  Victor 
Hugo,  and  Germany  absolutely  none,  of  the  calibre 
of  a  dozen  Englishmen  —  Tennyson,  Browning,  Car- 
lyle,  Thackeray,  Dickens,  and  not  a  few  others,  from 
Landor  to  Mr  Ruskin  ;  that  Germany,  further,  had 
scarcely  one,  though  France  had  more  than  one  or 
two,  great  writers  of  the  second  class  :  and  we  say, 
"Either  your  'living  intellectual  instrument'  is  a  juggle 
of  words,  or  you  really  are  neglecting  fact."  Many — 
very  many — similar  retorts  are  possible ;  and  the  most 
hopeless  variance  of  all  must  come  when  we  arrive  at 
Mr  Arnold's  championship  of  that  ungainly  and  sterile 
mule  the  English  hexameter,  and  when  we  review  the 
specimens  of  the  animal  that  he  turns  out  from  his 
own  stables  for  our  inspection. 

But  it  matters  not.  For  all  this,  and  very  much 
more  than  all  this,  which  may  be  passed  over  as 
unnecessary  or  improper,  nothing  like  the  book  had, 
for  positive  critical  quality,  and  still  more  for  germinal 
influence,  been  seen  by  its  generation,  and  nothing 
of  the  same  quality  and  influence  has  been  seen  for 
more  than  a  technical  generation  since.  It  would  of 
course  be  uncritical  in  the  last  degree  to  take  the 
change  in  English  criticism  which  followed  as  wholly 
and    directly   Mr    Arnold's    work.      He    was    not    even 


72  MATTHEW  ARNOLD. 

the  voice  crying  in  the  wilderness  :  only  one  lof  many 
voices  in  a  land  ready  at  least  to  be  eared  and  pathed. 
But  he  was  the  earliest  of  such  voices,  the  clearest, 
most  original,  most  potent ;  and  a  great  deal  of  what 
followed  was  directly  due  to  him. 

The  non-literary  events  of  his  Ufe  during  this  period 
were  sufficiently  varied  if  not  very  momentous.  We 
have  mentioned  the  domiciling  in  Chester  Square,  which 
took  place  in  February  1858,  perhaps  on  the  strength 
of  the  additional  income  from  Oxford.  In  the  late 
summer  of  that  year  he  went  alone  to  Switzerland, 
and  next  spring,  shortly  after  the  New  Year,  received, 
to  his  very  great  joy,  a  roving  commission  to  France, 
Belgium,  Switzerland,  and  Piedmont,  to  report  on 
elementary  education.  "  Foreign  life,"  he  says,  with 
that  perfect  naturalness  which  makes  the  charm  of 
his  letters,  "  is  still  to  me  perfectly  delightful  and 
liberating  in  the  last  degree."  And  he  was  duly 
"  presented "  at  home,  in  order  that  he  might  be 
presentable  abroad.  But  the  first  days  of  the  actual 
sojourn  (as  we  have  them  recorded  in  a  letter  to  his 
mother  of  April  14)  were  saddened  by  that  death  of 
his  brother  William,  which  he  has  enshrined  in  verse. 

He  had,  however,  plenty  to  distract  him.  France 
was  all  astir  with  the  Austrian  war,  and  it  is  impos- 
sible to  read  his  expressions  of  half- awed  admiration 
of  French  military  and  other  greatness  without  rather 
mischievous  amusement.  He  visited  the  Morbihan, 
which  struck  him  as  it  must  strike  every  one.     Here 


1851-1862.  73 

he  is  pathetic  over  a  promising  but  not  performing 
dinner  at  Auray  — "  soup,  Carnac  oysters,  shrimps, 
fricandcaii  of  veal,  breast  of  veal,  and  asparagus  ; "  but 
"  everything  so  detestable "  that  his  dinner  was  bread 
and  cheese.  He  must  have  been  unlucky  :  the  little 
Breton  inns,  at  any  rate  a  few  years  later  than  this, 
used,  it  is  true,  to  be  dirty  to  an  extent  appalling  to 
an  Englishman  ;  but  their  provender  was  usually  far 
from  contemptible.  There  is  more  sense  of  Breton 
scenery  in  another  letter  a  little  later.  Both  here 
and,  presently_,  in  Gascony  he  notes  truly  enough 
"the  incredible  degree  to  which  the  Revolution  has 
cleared  the  feudal  ages  out  of  the  minds  of  the  country 
people  " ;  but  if  he  reflected  on  the  bad  national  effect 
of  this  breach  with  the  past,  he  does  not  say  so. 
By  June  12  he  is  in  Holland,  and  does  not  like  it 
—  weather,  language,  &:c.,  all  English  in  the  worst 
sense,  apparently  without  the  Norman  and  Latin  ele- 
ment which  just  saves  us.  And  though  he  was  a 
very  short  time  in  the  Netherlands,  he  has  to  relieve 
his  feelings  by  more  abuse  of  them  when  he  gets 
back  to  Paris — in  fact,  he  speaks  of  Holland  exactly 
as  the  typical  Frenchman  speaks  of  England,  and  is 
accordingly  very  funny  to  read.  The  two  things  that 
make  Holland  most  interesting,  history  and  art,  were 
exactly  those  that  appealed  to  Mr  Arnold  least.  Then 
after  a  refreshing  bath  of  Paris,  he  goes  to  Strasbourg, 
and  Time — Time  the  Humourist  as  well  as  the  Avenger 
and  Consoler — makes  him  commit  himself  dreadfully. 


74  MATTHEW  ARNOLD. 

He  *' thinks  there  cannot  be  a  moment's  doubt"  that 
the  French  will  beat  the  Prussians  even  far  more 
completely  and  rapidly  than  they  are  beating  the 
Austrians.  Lord  Cowley,  it  seems,  "entirely  shared" 
his  conviction  that  "  the  French  will  always  beat  any 
number  of  Germans  who  come  into  the  field  against 
them,  and  never  be  beaten  by  any  one  but  the 
English."  Let  us  hope  that  Jove,  when  he  whistled 
half  this  prophecy  down  the  wind,  affirmed  the  rest 
of  it !  Switzerland  comes  next ;  and  he  is  beginning 
to  want  very  much  to  be  back  in  England,  partly 
"  for  the  children,  but  partly  also  from  affection  for 
that  foolish  old  country " — which  paternal  and  patri- 
otic desire  was  granted  about  the  end  of  the  month, 
though  only  for  a  short  time,  during  which  he  wrote 
a  pamphlet  on  the  Italian  question.  Then  "  M.  le 
Professeur  Docteur  Arnold,  Directeur  General  de 
toutes  les  Ecoles  de  la  Grande  Bretagne,"  returned 
to  France  for  a  time,  saw  Merimee  and  George  Sand 
and  Renan,  as  well  as  a  good  deal  of  Sainte-Beuve,  and 
was  back  again  for  good  in  the  foolish  old  country  at 
the  end  of  the  month. 

In  the  early  winter  of  1859-60  we  find  him  a  volun- 
teer, commenting  not  too  happily  on  "  the  hideous  Eng- 
lish toadyism  which  invests  lords  and  great  people  with 
commands,"  a  remark  which  seems  to  clench  the  infer- 
ence that  he  had  not  appreciated  the  effect  of  the 
Revolution  upon  France.  For  nearly  three  parts  of 
1 860  we  have  not  a  single  letter,  except  one  in  January 


1851-1862.  75 

pleasantly  referring  to  his  youngest  child  "in.  black 
velvet  and  red-and-white  tartan,  looking  such  a  duck  that 
it  was  hard  to  take  one's  eyes  off  him."  ^  This  letter,  by 
the  way,  ends  with  an  odd  admission  from  the  author  of 
the  remark  quoted  just  now.  He  says  of  the  Americans, 
"It  seems  as  if  few  stocks  could  be  trusted  to  grow  up 
properly  without  having  a  priesthood  and  an  aristocracy 
to  act  as  their  schoolmasters  at  some  time  or  other  of 
their  national  existence."  This  is  a  confession.  The 
gap,  however,  is  partly  atoned  for  by  a  very  pleasant 
batch  in  September  from  Viol  Salm  in  the  Ardennes, 
where  the  whole  family  spent  a  short  time,  and  where 
the  Director-General  of  all  the  schools  in  Great  Britain 
had  splendid  fishing,  the  hapless  Ardennes  trout  being 
only  accustomed  to  nets. 

Then  the  interest  returns  to  literature,  and  the  lectures 
on  translating  Homer,  and  Tennyson's  "  deficiency  in 
intellectual  power,"  and  Mr  Arnold's  own  interest  in  the 
Middle  Ages,  which  may  surprise  some  folk.  It  seems 
that  he  has  "  a  strong  sense  of  the  irrationality  of  that 
period "  and  of  "  the  utter  folly  of  those  who  take  it 
seriously  and  play  at  restoring  it."  Still  it  has  "  poetically 
the  greatest  charm  and  refreshment  for  me."  One  may 
perhaps  be  permitted  to  doubt  whether  you  can  get  much 
real  poetical  refreshment  out  of  a  thing  whitli  is  irrational 

^  The  letters  are  full  of  pleasant  child-worship,  the  best  passage 
of  all  being  perhaps  the  dialogue  between  Tom  and  ' '  Budge,"  at 
vol.  i.  p.  56,  with  the  five-year-old  cynicism  of  the  elder's  reply, 
"Oh  this  Is,  false.  Budge,  this  is  z\\  false P^  to  his  infant  brother's 
protestations  of  affection. 


'jS  MATTHEW  ARNOLD. 

and  which  you  don't  take  seriously :  the  practice  seems 
to  be  not  unlike  that  mediaeval  one  of  keeping  fools  for 
your  delectation.  Nor  can  the  observations  on  Tenny- 
son be  said  to  be  quite  just  or  quite  pleasant.  But  every 
age  and  every  individual  is  unjust  to  his  or  its  immediate 
predecessor — a  saying  dangerous  and  double-edged,  but 
true  for  all  that.  Then  he  "  entangles  himself  in  the 
study  of  accents  " — it  would  be  difficult  to  find  any  ad- 
venturer who  has  not  entangled  himself  in  that  study — 
and  groans  over  "  a  frightful  parcel  of  grammar  papers," 
which  he  only  just  "manages  in  time,"  apparently  on  the 
very  unwholesome  principle  (though  this  was  not  the 
same  batch)  of  doing  twenty  before  going  to  bed  when 
he  comes  in  from  a  dinner  -  party  at  eleven  o'clock. 
Colds,  Brighton,  praise  from  Sainte-Beuve,  critical  attacks 
in  the  English  papers,  and  (not  quite  unprovoked)  from 
F.  A\\  Newman,  reflections  on  the  Age  of  Wisdom  (forty), 
and  a  meeting  with  Thackeray,  the  Laureate  of  that  age, 
diversify  the  history  agreeably.  Then  we  come  to  a 
dead,  and  now  rather  more  than  dull,  controversy  over 
the  Revised  Code,  of  which  we  need  not  say  much. 
Official  etiquette  on  such  matters,  especially  in  England, 
is  very  loose,  though  he  himself  seems  to  have  at  one 
time  thought  it  distantly  possible,  though  not  likely,  that 
he  would  be  ejected  for  the  part  he  took.  And  his  first 
five  years'  tenure  of  the  Oxford  Chair  ends  with  the 
delivery  of  the  Creweian  oration,  as  to  the  composition 
of  which  he  consoles  himself  (having  heard  both  from 
the  Vice-Chancellor  and  others  that  there  v/as  to  be  "a 


I85I-I862.  JJ 

great  row  ")  by  reflecting  that  "  it  doesn't  much  .matter 
what  he  writes,  as  he  shall  not  be  heard."  I  do  not 
know  whether  the  prediction  was  justified  ;  but  if  so,  the 
same  fate  had,  according  to  tradition,  befallen  his  New- 
digate  some  twenty  years  earlier.  In  neither  case  can 
the  *'  row  "  have  had  any  personal  reference.  Though 
his  lectures  were  never  largely  attended  by  undergradu- 
ates, he  was  always  popular  in  Oxford. 


7^ 


CHAPTER    III. 

A     FRENCH     ETON ESSAYS     IN    CRITICISM CELTIC 

LITERATURE NEW  POEMS LIFE     FROM    1862     TO 

1867. 

The  period  of  Mr  Arnold's  second  tenure  of  the  Poetry 
Chair,  from  1862  to  1867,  was  much  more  fertile  in  re- 
markable books  than  that  of  his  first.  It  was  during 
this  time  that  he  established  himself  at  once  as  the  leader 
of  English  critics  by  his  Essays  in  Crittds?n  (some  of 
which  had  first  taken  form  as  Oxford  Lectures)  and  that 
he  made  his  last  appearance  with  a  considerable  collec- 
tion of  New  Poems.  It  was  during  this,  or  immediately 
after  its  expiration,  that  he  issued  his  second  collected 
book  of  lectures  on  The  Study  of  Celtic  Literature  ;  and 
it  was  then  that  he  put  in  more  popular,  though  still  in 
not  extremely  popular,  forms  the  results  of  his  investi- 
gations into  Continental  education.  It  was  during  this 
time  also  that  his  thoughts  took  the  somewhat  unfor- 
tunate twist  towards  the  mission  of  reforming  his  coun- 
try, not  merely  in  matters  literary,  where  he  was  excel- 
lently qualified  for  the  apostolate,  but  in  the  much  more 


1 862- 1 867.  79 

dubiously  warranted  function  of  political,  "  sociological," 
and  above  all,  ecclesiastical  or  anti-ecclesiastical  gospeller. 
With  all  these  things  we  must  now  deal. 

No  one  of  Mr  Arnold's  books  is  more  important,  or 
more  useful  in  studying  the  evolution  of  his  thought  and 
style,  than  A  Fre?tch  Eto7i  (1864).  Although  he  was 
advancing  in  middle-life  when  it  was  written,  and  had 
evidently,  as  the  phrase  goes,  "  made  up  his  bundle  of 
prejudices,"  he  had  not  v.-ritten,  or  at  least  published, 
very  much  prose ;  his  mannerisms  had  not  hardened. 
And  above  all,  he  was  but  just  catching  the  public  ear, 
and  so  was  not  tempted  to  assume  the  part  of  Chester- 
field-Socrates, which  he  played  later,  to  the  diversion  of 
some,  to  the  real  improvement  of  many,  but  a  little  to 
his  own  disaster.  He  was  very  thoroughly  acquainted 
with  the  facts  of  his  subject,  which  was  not  always  the 
case  later ;  and  though  his  assumptions — the  insensi- 
bility of  aristocracies  to  ideas,  the  superiority  of  the 
French  to  the  English  in  this  respect,  the  failure  of  the 
Anglican  Church,  and  so  forth — are  already  as  question- 
able as  they  are  confident,  he  puts  them  with  a  certain 
modesty,  a  certain  eV^et/ceta,  which  was  perhaps  not 
always  so  obvious  when  he  came  to  preach  that 
quality  itself  later.  About  the  gist  of  the  book  it  is  not 
necessary  to  say  very  much.  He  practically  admits  the 
obvious  and  unanswerable  objection  that  his  French  JLton, 
whether  we  look  for  it  at  Toulouse  or  look  for  it  at 
Soreze,  is  very  French,  but  not  at  all  Eton.  He  does 
not  really  attempt  to  meet  the  more  dangerous  though 


So  MATTHEW   ARNOLD. 

less  epigrammatic  demurrer,  "  Do  you  wanf  schools  to 
turn  out  products  of  this  sort  ?  "  It  was  only  indirectly 
his  fault,  but  it  was  a  more  or  less  direct  consequence  of 
his  arguments,  that  a  process  of  making  ducks  and  drakes 
of  English  grammar-school  endowments  began,  and  was 
(chiefly  in  the  "  seventies  ")  carried  on,  with  results,  the 
mischievousness  of  which  apparently  has  been  known 
and  noted  only  by  experts,  and  which  they  have  chiefly 
kept  to  themselves. 

All  this  is  already  ancient  history,  and  history  not 
ancient  enough  to  be  venerable.  But  the  book  as  a 
book,  and  also  as  a  document  in  the  case,  has,  and 
always  will  have,  interest.  "  The  cries  and  catch- 
words "  which  Mr  Arnold  denounces,  as  men  so  often 
do  denounce  their  own  most  besetting  temptations, 
have  not  yet  quite  mastered  him  ;  but  they  have  made 

,a  lodgment.  The  revolt — in  itself  quite  justifiable,  and 
even  admirable  —  from  the  complacent  acceptance  of 
English  middle-class  thought,  English  post-Reform-Bill 

V  politics,  English  mid-century  taste  and  ethics  and  philo- 
sophy,— from  everything,  in  short,  of  which  Macaulay 
was  the  equally  accepted  and  representative  eulogist 
and  exponent,  is  conspicuous.  It  is  from  foreign  and 
almost  hostile  sources  that  we  must  expect  help.  The 
State  is  to  resume,  or  to  initiate,  its  guidance  of  a  very 
large  part,  if  not  of  the  whole,  of  the  matters  which 
popular  thought.  Liberal  and  Conservative  alike,  then 
assigned  to  individual  action  or  private  combination. 
We  have  not  yet  Barbarians,  Philistines,  and  Populace 


1 862- 1 867.  8 1 

labelled  with  their  tickets  and  furnished  with  their 
descriptions ;  but  the  three  classes  are  already  sharply 
^separated  in  Mr  Arnold's  mind,  and  we  can  see  that 
only  in  the  Philistine  who  burns  Dagon,  and  accepts  cir- 
cumcision and  culture  fully,  is  there  to  be  any  salvation. 
The  anti-clerical  and  anti-theological  animus  is  already 
strong  ;  the  attitude  dantis  jura  Catofiis  is  arranged  ;  the 
"'ura  themselves,  if  not  actually  graven  and  tabulated, 
can  be  seen  coming  with  very  little  difficulty.  Above 
all,  the  singing-robes  are  pretty  clearly  laid  aside ;  the 
Scholar-Gipsy  exercises  no  further  spell ;  we  have  turned 
to  prose  and  (as  we  can  best  manage  it)  sense.  .,.»''-^ 
But  A  French  Eto7i  is  perhaps  most  interesting  for  its 
style.  In  this  respect  it  marks  a  stage,  and  a  distinct 
one,  between  the  Preface  of  1853  and  the  later  and 
better  known  works.  More  of  a  concio  ad  vulgus  than 
the  former,  it  shows  a  pretty  obvious  endeavour  to 
soften  and  popularise,  without  unduly  vulgarising,  the 
academic  tone  of  the  earlier  work.  And  it  does  not 
yet  display  those  "  mincing  graces "  which  were  some- 
times attributed  (according  to  a  very  friendly  and  most 
competent  critic,  "  harshly,  but  justly  ")  to  the  later. 
The  mannerisms,  indeed,  like  the  dogmatisms,  are 
pretty  clearly  imminent.  Slightly  exotic  vocabulary — 
"habitude,"  "repartition,"  for  "habit,"  "distribution" 
— makes  its  appearance.  That  abhorrence  of  the  con- 
junction, which  made  Mr  Arnold  later  give  us  rows  of 
adjectives  and  substantives,  with  never  an  "  and "  to 
string   them   together,  is   here.      But   no   one  of  these 

F 


82  MATTHEW  ARNOLD. 

tricks,  nor  any  other,  is  present  in  excess :  there  is 
nothing  that  can  justly  be  called  falsetto ;  and  in  es- 
pecial, though  some  names  of  merely  ephemeral  in- 
terest are  in  evidence  —  Baines,  Roebuck,  Miall,  &c., 
Mr  Arnold's  well  -  known  substitutes  for  Cleon  and 
Cinesias — there  is  nothing  like  the  torrent  of  personal 
allusion  in  Friejidshif  s  Garland.  "  Bottles  "  and  his 
company  are  not  yet  with  us  ;  the  dose  of  persiflage 
is  rigorously  kept  down  ;  the  author  has  not  reached  the 
stage  when  he  seemed  to  hold  sincerely  the  principle  so 
wickedly  put  by  Mr  Lewis  Carroll,  that 

**  What  I  tell  you  three  times  is  true," 

and  that  the  truth  could  be  made  truest  by  making  the 
three  thirty. 

The  result  is  that  he  never  wrote  better.  A  little 
of  the  dignity  of  his  earlier  manner — when  he  simply 
followed  that  admirable  older  Oxford  style,  of  which 
Newman  was  the  greatest  master  and  the  last  —  is 
gone,  but  it  has  taken  some  stiffness  with  it.  Some 
— indeed  a  good  deal — of  the  piquancy  of  the  later 
is  not  yet  apparent ;  but  its  absence  implies,  and  is 
more  than  compensated  by,  the  concomitant  absence 
of  those  airs  and  flings,  those  interludes  as  of  an  aca- 
demic jester,  in  cap  and  gown  and  liripipe  instead  of 
motley,  which  have  been  charged,  not  quite  unjustly,  on 
the  Arnold  that  we  know  best.  There  is  hardly  in 
English  a  better  example  of  the  blending  and  concilia- 
tion of  the  two  modes  of  argumentative  writing  referred 


1 862- 1 86/.  83 

to  in  Bishop  Kurd's  acute  observation,  that  if  your  first 
object  is  to  convince,  you  cannot  use  a  style  too  soft 
and  insinuating;  if  you  want  to  confute,  the  rougher 
and  more  unsparing  the  better.  And  the  description 
and  characterisation   are  quite  excellent. 

Between   A  Frerich  Eton  and  the  second  collection 
of  Oxford  Lectures  came,  in   1865,  the  famous  Essays 
in    Crifitisjn^    the    first    full    and    varied,   and    perhaps 
always    the    best,    expression    and    illustration     of    the 
author's  critical  attitude,  the  detailed  manifesto  and  ex- 
emplar of  the  new  critical  method,  and  so  one  of  the 
epoch-making    books    of   the   later  nineteenth    century 
in    English.       It    consisted,  in    the   first    edition,   of  a 
Preface  (afterwards  somewhat  altered  and  toned  down) 
and  of  nine  essays  (afterwards  to  be  made  ten  by  the 
addition  of  A   Persian  Passion- Play).      The   two   first 
of  these   were   general,    on    The   Function   of  Criticism 
at   the    Prese?it    Time    and    The    Literary    InfiueJice    of 
Acade7?iies,    while    the    other    seven     dealt    respectively 
with   the   two    Guerins,    Heine,    Pagan    and   Mediceval 
Religious     Sentime?it,     Joubert,    Spinoza,    and     Marcus 
Aurelius.       I   am   afraid   it  must  be  taken  as  only  too 
strong  a  confirmation  of  Mr  Arnold's  own  belief  as  to 
the  indifference  of  the  English  people  to  criticism  that 
no    second    edition    of    this    book    was    called    for   till 
four  years  were  past,   no  third  for  ten,  and  no  fourth 
for  nearly  twenty. 

Yet,  to  any  one  whom  the  gods   have   made  in  the 
very   slightest    degree    critical,   it   is   one    of   the   most 


84  MATTHEW  ARNOLD. 

fascinating  (if  sometimes  also  one  of  the  most  pro- 
voking) of  books ;  and  the  fascination  and  provoca- 
tion should  surely  have  been  felt  even  by  others.  As 
always  with  the  author,  there  is  nothing  easier  than 
to  pick  holes  in  it :  in  fact,  on  his  own  principles, 
one  is  simply  bound  to  pick  holes.  He  evidently 
enjoyed  himself  very  much  in  the  Preface :  l>ut  it 
may  be  doubted  whether  the  severe  Goddess  of  Taste 
can  have  altogether  smiled  on  his  enjoyment.  He 
is  superciliously  bland  to  the  unlucky  and  no  doubt 
rather  unwise  Mr  Wright  {ik  supra) :  he  tells  the 
Gtiardian  in  a  periphrasis  that  it  is  dull,  and  "  Pres- 
byter Anglicanus "  that  he  is  born  of  Hyrcanian 
tigers,  and  the  editor  of  the  Saturday  Review  that 
he  is  a  late  and  embarrassed  convert  to  the  Philis- 
tines. He  introduces  not  merely  Mr  Spurgeon,  a 
Philistine  of  some  substance  and  memory,  but  hap- 
less forgotten  shadows  like  "  Mr  Clay,"  "  Mr  Dif- 
fanger,"  "Inspector  Tanner,"  "Professor  Pepper"  to 
the  contempt  of  the  world.  And  then,  when  we  are 
beginning  to  find  all  this  laughter  rather  "thorn- 
crackling  "  and  a  little  forced,  the  thing  ends  with 
the  famous  and  magnificent  epipJioneina  (as  they  would 
have  said  in  the  old  days)  to  Oxford,  which  must  for  ever 
conciliate  all  sons  of  hers  and  all  gracious  outsiders 
to  its  author,  just  as  it  turns  generation  after  genera- 
tion of  her  enemies  sick  with  an   agonised  grin. 

So,  again,  one  may  marvel,  and  almost  grow  angry, 
at  the  whim  which  made   Mr  Arnold  waste  two  whole 


1 862- 1 86/.  85 

essays  on  an  amiable  and  interesting  person  like 
Eugenie  de  Gucrin  and  a  mere  nobody  like  her 
brother.  They  are  very  pretty  essays  in  themselves ; 
but  then  (as  Mr  Arnold  has  taught  us),  "  all  depends 
on  the  subject,"  and  the  subjects  here  are  so  exceed- 
ingly unimportant !  Besides,  as  he  himself  almost 
openly  confessed,  and  as  everybody  admits  now,  he 
really  did  not  understand  French  poetry  at  all.  When 
we  come  to  "  Keats  and  Guerin,"  there  is  nothing  for 
it  but  to  take  refuge  in  Byron's 


(( 


Such  names  coupled  !  " 


and  pass  with  averted  face.  Seventy-two  mortal  pages 
of  Matthew  Arnold's,  at  his  very  best  time,  wasted  on 
a  brother  and  sister  who  happened  to  be  taken  up  by 
Sainte-Beuve ! 

But  the  rest  of  the  book  is  entirely  free  from  liability 
to  any  such  criticism  as  this.  To  some  criticism — even 
to  a  good  deal — it  is  beyond  doubt  exposed.  The  first 
and  most  famous  paper — the  general  manifesto,  as  the 
earlier  Preface  to  the  Poems  is  the  special  one,  of  its 
author's  literary  creed — on  The  Function  of  Criticism  at 
the  Present  Time  must  indeed  underlie  much  the  same 
objections  as  those  that  have  been  made  to  the  introduc- 
tion. Here  is  the  celebrated  passage  about  "  Wragg  is 
in  custody,"  the  text  of  which,  though  no  doubt  pain- 
ful in  subject  and  inurbane  in  phraseology,  is  really 
a  rather  slender  basis  on  which  to  draw  up  an  in- 
dictment against  a  nation.     Here  is  the  astounding — 


S6  MATTHEW  ARNOLD. 

the,  if  serious,  almost  preternatural  —  statement  that 
"not  very  much  of  current  English  literature  comes 
into  this  best  that  is  known  and  thought  in  the  world. 
Not  very  much  I  fear  :  certainly  less  than  of  the  current 
literature  of  France  and  Germany."  And  this  was  1865, 
when  the  Germans  had  had  no  great  poet  but  Heine 
for  a  generation,  nor  any  great  poets  but  Goethe  and 
Heine  for  some  five  hundred  years,  no  great  prose- 
writer  but  Heine  (unless  you  call  Goethe  one),  and 
were  not  going  to  have  any!  It  was  1865,  when  all 
the  great  French  writers,  themselves  of  but  some  thirty 
years'  standing,  were  dying  off,  not  to  be  succeeded ! 
1865,  when  for  seventy  years  England  had  not  lacked, 
and  for  nearly  thirty  more  was  not  to  lack,  poets  and 
prose-writers  of  the  first  order  by  the  dozen  and  almost 
the  score !  Here,  too,  is  the  marvellous  companion- 
statement  that  in  the  England  of  the  first  quarter  of 
the  century  was  "no  national  glow  of  life."  It  was 
the  chill  of  death,  I  suppose,  which  made  the  nation 
fasten  on  the  throat  of  the  world  and  choke  it  into 
submission  during  a  twenty  years'  struggle. 

But  these  things  are  only  Mr  Arnold's  way.  I  have 
never  been  able  to  satisfy  myself  whether  they  were 
deliberate  paradoxes,  or  sincere  and  rather  pathetic 
paralogisms.  For  instance,  did  he  really  think  that 
the  J?evue  des  Deux  Mondes^  an  organ  of  "  dukes, 
dunces,  and  ddvotes,''  as  it  used  to  be  called  even  in 
those  days  by  the  wicked  knowing  ones,  a  nursing 
mother   of   Academies   certainly,   and   a   most   respect- 


1 862- 1 86/.  87 

able  periodical  in  all  ways  —  that  this  good  Revue 
actually  "  had  for  its  main  function  to  understand 
and  utter  the  best  that  is  known  and  thought  in  the 
world,"  absolutely  existed  as  an  organ  for  "  the  free 
play  of  mind "  ?  I  should  be  disposed  to  think  that 
the  truer  explanation  of  such  things  is  that  they  were 
neither  quite  paradoxes  nor  quite  paralogisms ;  but 
the  offspring  of  an  innocent  willingness  to  believe 
what  he  wished,  and  of  an  almost  equally  innocent 
desire  to  provoke  the  adversary.  Unless  (as  unluckily 
they  sometimes  are)  they  be  taken  at  the  foot  of  the 
letter,  they  can  do  no  harm,  and  their  very  piquancy 
helps  the  rest  to  do  a  great  deal  of  good. 

For  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  in  the  main  con- 
tention of  his  manifesto,  as  of  his  book,  Mr  Arnold 
was  absolutely  right.  It  was  true  that  England,  save 
for  spasmodic  and  very  partial  appearances  of  it  in  a 
few  of  her  great  men  of  letters — Ben  Jonson,  Dryden, 
Addison,  Johnson — had  been  wonderfully  deficient  in 
criticism  up  to  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century ;  and 
that  though  in  the  early  nineteenth  she  had  produced 
one  great  philosophical  critic,  another  even  greater  on 
the  purely  literary  side,  and  a  third  of  unique  apprecia- 
tive sympathy,  in  Coleridge,  Hazlitt,  and  Lamb,  she  had 
not  followed  these  up,  and  had,  even  in  them,  shown 
certain  critical  limitations.  It  was  true  that  though  the 
Germans  had  little  and  the  French  nothing  to  teach  us 
in  range,  both  had  much  to  teach  us  in  thoroughness, 
method,    style   of  criticism.     And   it  was   truest   of  all 


88  MATTHEW  ARNOLD. 

(though  Mr  Arnold,  who  did  not  like  the  historic 
estimate,  would  have  admitted  this  with  a  certain 
grudge)  that  the  time  imperatively  demanded  a  thor- 
ough "  stock  -  taking "  of  our  own  literature  in  the 
light  and  with  the  help  of  others. 

Let  \hepalma — let  the  maxima  palma — of  criticism 
be  given  to  him  in  that  he  first  fought  for  the  creed  of 
this  literary  orthodoxy,  and  first  exemplified  (with  what- 
ever admixture  of  will-worship  of  his  own,  with  what- 
ever quaint  rites  and  ceremonies)  the  carrying  out  of 
the  cult.  It  is  possible  that  his  direct  influence  may 
have  been  exaggerated ;  one  of  the  most  necessary, 
though  not  of  the  most  grateful,  businesses  of  the 
literary  historian  is  to  point  out  that  with  rare  excep- 
tions, and  those  almost  wholly  on  the  poetic  side,  great 
men  of  letters  rather  show  in  a  general,  early,  and 
original  fashion  a  common  tendency  than  definitely 
lead  an  otherwise  sluggish  multitude  to  the  promised 
land.  But  no  investigation  has  deprived,  or  is  at  all 
likely  to  deprive,  the  Essays  in  Criticis?n  of  their  place 
as  an  epoch-making  book,  as  the  manual  of  a  new  and 
often  independent,  but,  on  the  whole,  like-minded, 
critical  movement  in  England. 

Nor  can  the  blow  of  the  first  essay  be  said  to  be  ill 
followed  up  in  the  second,  the  almost  equally  famous 
(perhaps  the  j?iore  famous)  InJIuence  of  Academies.  Of 
course  here  also,  here  as  always,  you  may  make  reserva- 
tions. It  is  a  very  strong  argument,  an  argument 
stronger  than  any  of  Mr  Arnold's,  that  the  institutions 


1 862- 1 86;.  89 

of  a  nation,  if  they  are  to  last,  if  they  are  to  do  any 
good,  must  be  in  accordance  with  the  spirit  of  the 
nation ;  that  if  the  French  Academy  has  been  bene- 
ficial, it  is  because  the  French  spirit  is  academic ;  and 
that  if  (as  we  may  fear,  or  hope,  or  believe,  according 
to  our  different  principles)  the  English  spirit  is  un- 
academic,  an  Academy  would  probably  be  impotent 
and  perhaps  ridiculous  in  England,  But  we  can  allow 
for  this ;  and  when  we  have  allowed  for  it,  once  more 
Mr  Arnold's  warnings  are  warnings  on  the  right  side, 
true,  urgent,  beneficial.  There  are  still  the  minor 
difficulties.  Even  at  the  time,  much  less  as  was  known 
of  France  in  England  then  than  now,  there  were  those 
who  opened  their  eyes  first  and  then  rubbed  them  at 
the  assertion  that  "  openness  of  mind  and  flexibility  of 
intelligence"  were  the  characteristics  of  the  French 
people.  But  once  more  also,  no  matter !  The  cen- 
tral drift  is  right,  and  the  central  drift  carries  many 
excellent  things  with  it,  and  may  be  allowed  to  wash 
away  the  less  excellent.  Mr  Arnold  is  right  on  the 
average  qualities  of  French  prose ;  whether  he  is  right 
about  the  "provinciality"  of  Jeremy  Taylor  as  compared 
to  Bossuet  or  not,  he  is  right  about  "  critical  freaks," 
though,  by  the  way — but  it  is  perhaps  unnecessary  to 
finish  that  sentence.  He  is  right  about  the  style  of 
Mr  Palgrave  and  right  about  the  style  of  Mr  Kinglake ; 
and  I  do  not  know  that  I  feel  more  especially  bound 
to  pronounce  him  wrong  about  the  ideas  of  Lord 
Macaulay.      But   had   he  been   as   wrong   in   all   these 


go  MATTHEW   ARNOLD. 

things  as  he  was  right,  the  central  drift  would  still  be 
inestimable — the  drift  of  censure  and  contrast  applied 
to  English  eccentricity,  the  argument  that  this  eccen- 
tricity, if  it  is  not  very  good,  is  but  too  likely  to  be 
very  bad. 

Yet  it  is  perhaps  in  the  illustrative  essays  that  the 
author  shows  at  his  best.  Even  in  the  Guerin  pieces, 
annoyance  at  the  waste  of  first-rate  power  on  tenth- 
rate  people  need  not  wholly  blind  us  to  the  grace  of 
the  exposition  and  to  the  charming  eulogy  of  "  distinc- 
tion "  at  the  end.  That,  if  Mr  iVrnold  had  known  a 
little  more  about  that  French  Romantic  School  which 
he  despised,  he  would  have  hardly  assigned  this  dis- 
tinction to  Maurice ;  and  that  Eugenie,  though  un- 
doubtedly a  "  fair  soul,"  was  in  this  not  distinguished 
from  hundreds  and  thousands  of  other  women,  need 
not  matter  very  much  after  all.  And  with  the  rest 
there  need  be  few  allowances,  or  only  amicable  ones. 
One  may  doubt  whether  Heine's  charm  is  not  mainly 
due  to  the  very  lawlessness,  the  very  contempt  of  "  sub- 
ject," the  very  quips  and  cranks  and  caprices  that  Mr 
Arnold  so  sternly  bans.  But  who  shall  deny  the  ex- 
cellence and  the  exquisiteness  of  this,  the  first  English 
tribute  of  any  real  worth  to  the  greatest  of  German 
poets,  to  one  of  the  great  poets  of  the  world,  to  the 
poet  who  with  Tennyson  and  Hugo  completes  the  re- 
presentative trinity  of  European  poets  of  the  nineteenth 
century  proper?  Very  seldom  (his  applause  of  Gray, 
the  only  other  instance,  is  not  quite  on  a  par  with  this) 


1 862- 1 86/.  91 

does  the  critic  so  nearly  approach  enthusiasm  —  not 
merely  engouemefit  on  the  one  side  or  serene  approval 
on  the  other.  No  matter  that  he  pretends  to  admire 
Heine  for  his  "  modern  spirit "  (why,  O  Macaree^  as 
his  friend  Maurice  de  Guerin  might  have  said,  should 
a  modern  spirit  be  better  than  an  ancient  one,  or  what 
is  either  before  the  Eternal  ?)  instead  of  for  what  has 
been,  conceitedly  it  may  be,  called  the  "  tear-dew  and 
star-fire  and  rainbow-gold"  of  his  phrase  and  verse. 
He  felt  this  magic  at  any  rate.  No  matter  that  he 
applies  the  wrong  comparison  instead  of  the  right  one, 
and  depreciates  French  in  order  to  exalt  German,  in- 
stead of  thanking  Apollo  for  these  two  good  different 
things.  The  root  of  the  matter  is  the  right  root,  a 
discriminating  enthusiasm  :  and  the  flower  of  the  matter 
is  one  of  the  most  charming  critical  essays  in  Enghsh. 
It  is  good,  no  doubt,  to  have  made  up  one's  mind  about 
Heine  before  reading  Mr  Arnold ;  but  one  almost 
envies  those  who  were  led  to  that  enchanted  garden 
by  so  delightful  an  interpreter. 

Almost  equally  delightful,  and  with  no  touch  of  the 
sadness  which  must  always  blend  with  any  treatment  of 
Heine,  is  the  next  essay,  the  pet,  I  believe,  of  some 
very  excellent  judges,  on  "  Pagan  and  Mediaeval  Re- 
ligious Sentiment,"  with  its  notable  translation  of  Theo- 
critus and  its  contrast  with  St  Francis.  One  feels, 
indeed,  that  Mr  Arnold  was  not  quite  so  well  equipped 
with  knowledge  on  the  one  side  as  on  the  other ; 
indeed,  he  never  was  well  read  in  mediaeval  literature. 


92  MATTHEW   ARNOLD. 

But  his  thesis,  as  a  thesis,  is  capable  of  defence ;  in 
the  sternest  times  of  mihtary  etiquette  he  could  not 
have  been  put  to  death  on  the  charge  of  holding  out 
an  untenable  post ;  and  he  puts  the  different  sides  with 
incomparable  skill  and  charm.  Mr  Arnold  glosses 
Pagan  morals  rather  doubtfully,  but  so  skilfully ;  he 
rumples  and  blackens  mediaeval  life  more  than  rather 
unfairly,  but  with  such  a  light  and  masterly  touch  ! 

Different  again,  inferior  perhaps,  but  certainly  not  in 
any  hostile  sense  inferior,  is  the  "Joubert."  It  has 
been  the  fashion  with  some  to  join  this  essay  to  the 
Guerin  pieces  as  an  instance  of  some  incorrigible  twist 
in  Mr  Arnold's  French  estimates,  of  some  inability  to 
admire  the  right  things,  even  when  he  did  admire.  I 
cannot  agree  with  them.  Joubert,  of  course,  has  his 
own  shortcomings  as  a  /^;^j'/^ -writer.  He  is  rococo 
beside  La  Bruyere,  dilettante  beside  La  Rochefou- 
cauld, shallow  beside  Pascal.  There  is  at  times,  even 
if  you  take  him  by  himself,  and  without  comparison, 
something  thin  and  amateurish  and  conventional  about 
him.  But  this  is  by  no  means  always  or  very  often 
the  case ;  and  his  merits,  very  great  in  themselves, 
were  even  greater  for  Mr  Arnold's  general  purpose. 

That  subtle  and  sensitive  genius  did  not  go  wrong 
when  it  selected  Joubert  as  an  eminent  example  of 
those  gifts  of  the  French  mind  which  most  commended 
themselves  to  itself — an  exquisite  Jusksse,  an  alertness 
of  spirit  not  shaking  off  rule  and  measure,  above  all, 
a  consummate  propriety  in  the  true  and  best,  not  the 


1 862- 1 867.  93 

limited  sense  of  the  word.  Nor  is  it  difficult  to  observe 
in  the  shy  philosopher  a  temperament  which  must  have 
commended  itself  to  Mr  Arnold  almost  as  strongly  as 
his  literary  quality,  and  very  closely  indeed  connected 
with  that — the  temperament  of  equity,  of  epieikeia,  of 
freedom  from  swagger  and  brag  and  self-assertion. 
And  here,  once  more,  the  things  receive  precisely  their 
right  treatment,  the  treatment  proportioned  and  ad- 
justed at  once  to  their  own  value  and  nature  and  to 
the  use  which  their  critic  is  intending  to  make  of  them. 
For  it  is  one  of  the  greatest  literary  excellences  of  the 
Assays  in  Criticism  that,  with  rare  exceptions,  they  bear 
a  real  relation  to  each  other  and  to  the  whole — that 
they  are  not  a  bundle  but  an  organism ;  a  university, 
not  a  mob. 

The  subjects  of  the  two  last  essays,  Spinoza  and 
Marcus  Aurelius,  may  at  first  sight,  and  not  at  first  sight 
only,  seem  oddly  chosen.  For  although  the  conception 
of  literature  illustrated  in  the  earlier  part  of  the  book  is 
certainly  wide,  and  admits  —  nay,  insists  upon,  as  it 
always  did  with  Mr  Arnold — considerations  of  subject 
in  general  and  of  morals  and  religion  in  particular,  yet 
it  is  throughout  one  of  literature  as  such.  Now,  we 
cannot  say  that  the  interest  of  Spinoza  or  that  of  Marcus 
Aurelius,  great  as  it  is  in  both  cases,  is  wholly,  or  in 
the  main,  or  even  in  any  considerable  part,  a  literary 
interest.  With  Spinoza  it  is  a  philosophical-religious 
interest,  with  Marcus  Aurelius  a  moral-religious,  almost 
purely.     The  one  may  indeed  illustrate  that  attempt  to 


94  MATTHEW   ARNOLD. 

see  things  in  a  perfectly  white  Hght  which  Mr  Arnold 
thought  so  important  in  literature ;  the  other,  that  atten- 
tion to  conduct  which  he  thought  more  important  still. 
But  they  illustrate  these  things  in  themselves,  not  in 
relation  to  literature.  They  are  less  literary  even  than 
St  Francis  ;  far  less  than  the  author  of  the  Lnitation. 

It  cannot  therefore  but  be  suspected  that  in  including 
them   Mr  Arnold,  unconsciously  perhaps,  but  more  pro- 
bably  with    some    consciousness,    was    feeling   his   way 
towards  that  wide  extension  of  the  province  of  the  critic, 
that  resurrection  of  the  general  Socratic  attitude,  which 
he  afterwards  adventured.      But  it  cannot  be  said  that 
his  experiments  are  on  this  particular  occasion  in  any 
way  disastrous.     With  both  his  subjects  he  had  the  very 
strongest    sympathy  —  with    Spinoza    (as    already    with 
Heine)  as  a  remarkable  example  of  the  Hebraic  spirit 
and    genius,    rebellious    to    or    transcending    the   usual 
limitations   of  Hebraism  ;  with   Marcus  Aurelius  as  an 
example  of  that  non-Christian  morality  and   religiosity 
which  also  had  so  strong  an  attraction  for  him.     There 
is  no  trace  in  either  essay  of  the  disquieting  and  almost 
dismaying  jocularity  which  was  later  to  invade  his  dis- 
cussion of  such  things:  we  are  still  far  from  Bottles;  the 
three  Lord  Shaftesburys  relieve  us  by  not  even  threaten- 
ing to  appear.      And  accordingly  the  two  essays  add  in 
no  small  degree,  though  somewhat  after  the  fashion  of 
an   appendix   or  belated  episode,  to  the  charm  of  the 
book.     They  have  an  unction  which  never,  as  it  so  often 
does  in  the  case  of  Mr  Arnold's  dangerous  master  and 


1S62-1S67.  95 

model  Renan,  degenerates  into  unctuosity ;  they  are 
nobly  serious,  but  without  being  in  the  least  dull ;  they 
contain  some  exceedingly  just  and  at  the  same  time  per- 
fectly urbane  criticism  of  the  ordinary  reviewing  kind, 
and  though  they  are  not  without  instances  of  the  author's 
by-blows  of  slightly  unproved  opinion,  yet  these  are  by  no 
means  eminent  in  them,  and  are  not  of  a  provocative 
nature.  And  I  do  not  think  it  fanciful  to  suppose  that 
the  note  of  grave  if  unclassified  piety,  of  reconciliation 
and  resignation,  with  which  they  close  the  book,  was 
intended — that  it  was  a  deliberate  "  evening  voluntary" 
to  play  out  of  church  the  assistants  at  a  most  remarkable 
function — such  a  function  as  criticism  in  En2:lish  had 
not  celebrated  before,  such  as.  I  think,  it  may  vv'ithout 
unfairness  be  said  has  not  been  repeated  since.  Assays 
ifi  Critids7n,  let  us  repeat,  is  a  book  which  is  classed 
and  placed,  and  it  will  remain  in  that  class  and  place : 
the  fresh  wreaths  and  the  fresh  mud,  that  may  be  in  turn 
unfitly  thrown  upon  it,  will  affect  neither. 

Between  this  remarkable  book  and  the  later  ones  of 
the  same  lusirtim^  we  may  conveniently  take  up  the 
thread  of  biography  proper  where  we  last  dropped  it. 
The  letters  are  fuller  for  this  period  than  perhaps  for 
any  other ;  but  this  very  fulness  makes  it  all  the  more 
difficult  to  select  incidents,  never,  perhaps,  of  the  very 
first  importance,  but  vying  with  each  other  in  the  minor 
biographical  interests.  A  second  fishing  expedition  to 
Viel  Salm  was  attempted  in  August  1S62 ;  but  it  did  not 
escape  the  curse  which  seems  to  dog  attempts  at  repeti- 


g6  MATTHEW  ARNOLD. 

tion  of  the  same  pleasure.  The  river  was  hopelessly 
low  ;  the  fish  would  not  take  ;  and  the  traveller  came 
back  in  very  little  more  than  "  a  day  and  a  night  and 
a  morrow."  By  December  danger-signals  are  up  in  a 
letter  to  his  mother,  to  the  effect  that  "  it  is  intolerable 
absurdity  to  profess  [who  does?]  to  see  Christianity 
through  the  spectacles  of  a  number  of  second-  or  third- 
rate  men  who  lived  in  Queen  Elizabeth's  time  " — that 
time  so  fertile  in  nothing  but  the  second-rate  and  the 
third.  But  it  is  followed  a  little  later  by  the  less  dis- 
putable observation,  "  It  is  difficult  to  make  out  ex- 
actly at  what  [F.  D.]  Maurice  is  driving ;  perhaps  he 
is  always  a  little  dim  in  his  own  mind  "  on  that  point. 

The  illummations  at  the  Prince  of  Wales's  marriage, 
where  like  other  people  he  found  "  the  crowd  very  good- 
humoured,"  are  noted ;  and  the  beginning  of  Thyrsis 
where  and  while  the  fritillaries  blow.  But  from  the 
literary  point  of  view  few  letters  are  more  interesting 
than  a  short  one  to  Sir  Mountstuart  (then  Mr)  Grant 
Duff,  dated  May  14,  1863,  in  which  Mr  Arnold  declines 
an  edition  of  Heine,  the  loan  of  which  was  offered  for 
his  lecture — later  the  well-known  essay.  His  object, 
he  says,  "  is  not  so  much  to  give  a  literary  history  of 
Heine's  work  as  to  mark  his  place  in  modern  European 
letters,  and  the  special  tendency  and  significance  of  what 
he  did."  He  will,  therefore,  not  even  read  these  things 
of  Heine's  that  he  has  not  read,  but  will  take  the  Roma7i- 
cero  alone  for  his  text,  with  a  few  quotations  from  else- 
where.    With  a  mere  passing  indication  of  the  fact  that 


1 862- 1 867.  97 

Matthew  Arnold  here,  like  every  good  critic  of  this 
century,  avowedly  pursues  that  plan  of  "  placing  "  writers 
which  some  of  his  own  admirers  so  foolishly  decry,  I 
may  observe  that  this  is  a  locus  dassicus  for  his  own 
special  kind  of  criticism.  It  is  possible — I  do  not  know 
whether  he  did  so  —  that  Sir  Mountstuart  may,  on 
receiving  the  letter,  have  smiled  and  thought  of  "  Mon 
siege  est  fait";  but  I  am  sure  he  would  be  the  first  to 
admit  that  the  cases  were  different.  I  do  not  myself 
think  that  Mr  Arnold's  strong  point  was  that  complete 
grasp  of  a  literary  personality,  and  its  place,  which 
some  critics  aim  at  but  which  few  achieve.  His  im- 
patience—  here  perhaps  half  implied  and  later  openly 
avowed — of  the  historic  estimate  in  literature,  would  of 
itself  have  made  this  process  irksome  to  him.  But  on 
the  lines  of  his  own  special  vocation  as  a  critic  it  v/as 
not  only  irksome,  it  was  unnecessary.  His  function 
was  to  mark  the  special — perhaps  it  would  be  safer  to 
say  a  special — tendency  of  his  man,  and  to  bring  that 
out  with  all  his  devices  of  ingenious  reduplication, 
fascinating  rhetoric,  and  skilful  parading  of  certain 
favourite  axioms  and  general  principles.  This  function 
would  not  have  been  assisted — I  think  it  nearly  certain 
that  it  would  have  been  hampered  and  baulked — by 
that  attempt  to  find  "  the  whole "  which  the  Greek 
philosopher  and  poet  so  sadly  and  so  truly  declares  that 
few  boast  to  find.  It  was  a  side,  a  face,  a  phase  of  each 
man  and  writer,  that  he  wished  to  bring  out ;  and, 
though  he  might  sometimes  exaggerate  this,  yet  his  ex- 

G 


98  MATTHEW  ARNOLD. 

aggeration  was  scarcely  illegitimate.  To  bring  out  some- 
thing he  had  to  block  out  much.  If  he  had  attempted 
to  show  the  whole  Goethe,  the  whole  Heine,  the  whole 
Homer  or  Shakespeare  even,  they  would  have  been 
difficult  if  not  impossible  to  group  and  to  compare  in 
the  fashion  in  which  he  wished  to  deal  with  them. 

And  except  on  the  sheer  assumption,  which  is  surely 
a  fallacy,  that  siippressio  vert  is  always  and  not 
only  sometimes  siiggestio  falsi,  I  do  not  see  that  he  ex- 
ceeded a  due  licence  in  this  matter,  while  that  he  was 
wise  in  his  generation  there  can  be  no  doubt.  He 
wanted  to  influence  the  average  Englishman,  and  he 
knew  perfectly  well  there  is  nothing  the  average  English- 
man dislikes  so  much  as  guarded  and  elaborately  con- 
ditioned statements.  The  immense  popularity  and 
influence  of  Macaulay  had  been  due  to  his  hatred  of 
half-lights,  of  "  perhapses " ;  and  little  as  Mr  Arnold 
liked  Macaulay's  fiddle,  he  was  wise  enough  to  borrow 
his  rosin,  albeit  in  disguise.  If  a  critic  makes  too 
many  provisos,  if  he  "buts  "  too  much,  if  he  attempts  to 
paint  the  warts  as  well  as  the  beauties,  he  will  be 
accused  of  want  of  sympathy,  he  will  be  taxed  with 
timorousness  and  hedging,  at  best  he  will  be  blamed  for 
wire-drawn  and  hair-splitting  argument.  The  preambles 
of  exposition,  the  conclusions  of  summing  up,  will  often 
be  considered  tedious  or  impertinent.  The  opposite 
plan  of  selecting  a  nail  and  hitting  that  on  the  head 
till  you  have  driven  it  home  was,  in  fact,  as  much 
Mr  Arnold's  as  it  was  Macaulay's.     The  hammer-play 


1 862- 1 867.  99 

of  the  first  was  far  more  graceful  and  far  less  mono- 
tonous :  yet  it  was  hammer  -  play  all  the  same.  But 
we  must  return  to  our  Letters. 

A  dinner  with  Lord  Houghton — "  all  the  advanced 
Liberals  in  religion  and  politics,  and  a  Cingalese  in  full 
costume  " — a  visit  to  Cambridge  and  a  stroll  to  Grant 
Chester,  notice  of  about  the  first  elaborate  appreciation 
of  his  critical  work  which  had  appeared  in  England,  the 
article  by  the  late  Mr  S.  H.  Reynolds  in  the  Westmin- 
ster Review  for  October  1863,  visits  to  the  Roths- 
childs at  Aston  Clinton  and  Mentmore,  and  interesting 
notices  of  the  composition  of  the  Joubcrt.,  the  French 
Eton^  Szc.j  fill  up  the  year.  The  death  of  Thackeray 
extracts  one  of  those  criticisms  of  his  great  contempo- 
raries which  act  as  little  douches  from  time  to  time,  in 
the  words,  "  I  cannot  say  that  I  thoroughly  liked  him, 
though  we  were  on  friendly  terms  :  and  he  was  not  to 
my  mind  a  great  writer."  But  the  personal  reflections 
which  follow  are  of  value.  He  finds  "  the  sudden  ces- 
sation of  so  vigorous  an  existence  very  sobering.  To- 
day I  am  forty-one ;  the  middle  of  life  in  any  case,  and 
for  me  perhaps  much  more  than  the  middle.  I  have 
ripened  and  am  ripening  so  slowly  that  I  should  be  glad 
of  as  much  time  as  possible.  Yet  I  can  feel,  I  rejoice 
to  say,  an  inward  spring  which  seems  more  and  more  to 
gain  strength  and  to  promise  to  resist  outward  shocks, 
if  they  must  come,  however  rough.  But  of  this  inward 
spring  one  must  not  talk  [it  is  only  to  his  mother  that 
he  writes  this]  for  it  does  not  like  being  talked  about, 


lOO  MATTHEW  ARNOLD. 

and    threatens   to   depart   if   one   will    not    leave    it    in 
mystery." 

An  interview  with  Mr  Disraeli  at  Aston  Clinton,  not, 
as  one  may  suppose,  without  pleasant  words,  opens  1864. 
"  It  is  only  from  politicians  who  have  themselves  felt  the 
spell  of  literature  that  one  gets  these  charming  speeches," 
he  says,  and  they,  not  unnaturally,  charmed  him  so  much 
that  he  left  his  dressing-case  and  his  umbrella  behind 
him.  But  the  anti-crusade  is  more  and  more  declared. 
He  "  means  to  deliver  the  middle-class  out  of  the  hand 
of  their  Dissenting  ministers,"  and  in  the  interval  wants 
to  know  how  "that  beast  of  a  word  'waggonette'  is 
spelt  ?  "  The  early  summer  was  spent  at  Woodford,  on 
the  borders  of  Epping  Forest,  and  the  early  autumn  at 
Llandudno,  where  Welsh  scenery  and  the  poetry  of  the 
Celtic  race  "  quite  overpower  "  him.  Alas  !  some  other 
poetry  did  not,  and  when  we  find  him  in  September 
thinking  Enoch  Arden  "  perhaps  the  best  thing  Tenny- 
son has  done,"  we  are  not  surprised  to  find  this  remark- 
able special  appreciation  followed  by  a  general  depreci- 
ation, which  is  quite  in  keeping.  He  is  even  tempted 
(and  of  course  asked)  to  write  a  criticism  of  the  Laureate, 
but  justly  replies,  "  How  is  that  possible  ?  " 

From  1865  we  get  numerous  notices  of  the  notices 
of  the  Essays^  and  a  pleasant  and  full  account  of  a  second 
official  tour  on  the  Continent,  with  special  dwellings  at 
most  of  the  Western  and  Central  European  capitals. 
The  tour  lasted  from  April  to  November,  and  I  have 
sometimes  thought  that  it  might,  by  itself,  give  a  better 


1862-1867.  loi 

idea  of  Mr  Arnold  as  an  epistoler  than  the  Letters  at  large 
seem  to  have  given.  Early  in  1866  we  hear  of  the  be- 
ginnings of  the  Friendship's  Garland  series,  though  the 
occasion  for  that  name  did  not  come  till  afterwards. 
And  he  spent  the  summer  of  that  year  (as  he  did  that  of 
the  next)  in  a  farmhouse  at  West  Humble,  near  Dork- 
ing, while  he  caught  "  a  salmon  "  in  the  Deveron  during 
September. 

The  occasion  is  perhaps  a  good  one  to  say  a  few  words 
on  the  relations  between  Mr  Arnold  and  M.  Renan, 
though  the  latter  is  not  so  prominent  in  the  Continental 
letters  as  Sainte-Beuve  and  M.  Scherer  are.  The  author 
of  the  Vie  de  Jesus  was  a  very  slightly  younger  man  than 
Mr  Arnold  (he  was  born  in  1823),  but  in  consequence 
of  his  having  left  the  seminary  and  begun  early  to  live 
by  literary  work,  he  was  somewhat  in  advance  of  his 
English  compeer  in  literary  repute.  His  contributions 
to  the  Debats  and  the  Revue  des  Deux  Mondes  began  to 
be  collected  soon  after  1850,  and  his  first  remarkable 
single  book,  Averroes  et  P Averrois7ne^  dates  from  that  year. 
I  do  not  know  how  early  Mr  Arnold  became  acquainted 
with  his  written  work.  But  they  actually  met  in  1859, 
during  the  business  of  the  Foreign  Education  Commis- 
sion, and  there  is  a  very  remarkable  passage  in  a  letter 
to  Mrs  Forster  on  Christmas  Eve  of  that  year.  He  tells 
his  sister  of  "  Ernest  Renan,  a  Frenchman  I  met  in 
Paris,"  and  notes  the  considerable  resemblance  between 
their  lines  of  endeavour,  observing,  however,  that  Renan 
is  chiefly  "trying  to  inculcate  morality,  in  a  high  sense 


I02  MATTHEW  ARNOLD. 

of  the  word,  on  the  French,"  while  he  is  trying  to  incul- 
cate intelligence  on  the  English.     After  which  he  makes 
a  long  and  enthusiastic  reference  to  the  essay,  Sur  la 
Foesie  des  Races  Celtiqiies,  the  literary  results  of  which  we 
shall  soon  see.     I  do  not  know  whether  Mr  Arnold  ever 
expressed  to  his  intimates — he  has  not  to  my  knowledge 
left  any  published  expressions  of  it — what  he  thought  of 
those  later  and  very  peculiar  developments  of  "morality 
in  a  high  sense  of  the  word "  which  culminated  in  the 
Abhesse  de  Joiiarre   and   other    things.       His   sense   of 
humour  must  have  painfully  suggested  to  him  that  his 
own  familiar  friend  and  pattern  Frenchman  had  become 
one  of  the  most  conspicuous  examples  of  that  French 
lubricity  which  he  himself  denounced.       But  there  was 
no  danger  of  his  imitating  M.  Renan  in  this  respect.     In 
others  the  following  was  quite  unmistakable,  and,  I  am 
bound  to  say,  on  the  whole  rather  disastrous.      In  liter 
ary  criticism   Mr  Arnold  needed  no  teaching  from  M. 
Renan,  and  as  his  English  training  on  one  of  its  sides  pre- 
served him  from  the  Frenchman's  sentimental  hedonism, 
so  on  another  it  kept  him   from    the  wildest   excesses 
of  M.  Renan's  critical  reconstructions  of  sacred  history. 
But  he  copied  a  great  deal  too  much  of  his  master's 
dilettante  attitude  to  religion  as  a  whole,  and,  as  we  shall 
see,   he  adopted    and  carried  a  great  deal  further   M. 
Renan's  (I  am  told)  not  particularly  well-informed  and 
(I  am  sure)   very  hazardous   and  fantastic  ideas  about 
Celtic  literature.      On  the  whole,  the  two  were  far  too 
much  alike  to  do  each  other  any  good.     Exquisite  even 


1 862- 1 867.  103 

as  M.  Kenan's  mere  style  is,  it  is  exquisite  by  reason  of 
sweetness,  with  a  certain  not  quite  white  and  sUghtly 
phosphorescent  Hght,  not  by  strength  or  by  practical 
and  mascuHne  force.  Now  it  was  the  latter  qualities 
that  Mr  Arnold  wanted ;  sweetness  and  light  he  could 
not  want. 

As  the  tenure  of  his  Chair  drew  to  a  close,  and  as 
he  began  to  loathe  examination  papers  more  and  more 
(indeed  I  know  no  one  to  whom  zisus  concinnat  aftiorem 
in   the   case  of  these   documents),   he  made  some  en- 
deavours to  obtain  employment  which  might  be,  if  not 
both  more  profitable  and  less  onerous,  at  any  rate  one 
or  the  other.     First  he  tried  for  a  Charity  Commissioner- 
ship  ;  then  for  the  librarianship  of  the  House  of  Com- 
mons.     For  the  former   post   it   may   be   permitted  to 
think   that   his   extremely   strong  —  in   fact    partisan  — ■ 
opinions,   both    on   education  and    on    the    Church    of 
England,  were  a  most  serious  disqualification ;  his  ap- 
pointment to  the  latter  would  have  been  an  honour  to 
the  House  and  to  England,  and  would  have  shown  that 
sometimes  at  any  rate  the  right  man  can  find  the  right 
place.     But  he  got  neither.      He  delivered  his  last  Ox- 
ford lecture  in  the  summer  term  of  1867.     I  remcmbef 
that    there   were   strong    undergraduate  hopes   that  Mr 
Browning,  who  was  an  Honorary  M.A.,  might  be  got  to 
succeed  him ;    but   it   was   decided  that  the    honorary 
qualification  was  insufficient,  and  I  daresay  there  were 
other  objections.     Mr  Arnold  had  a  sort  of  "send-off' 
in  the  shape  of  two  great  dinners  at  Balliol  and  Merton, 


104  MATTHEW  ARNOLD. 

at  which  he  and  Mr  Browning  were  the  principal  guests, 
and  the  close  of  his  professorial  career  was  further  made 
memorable  by  the  issue  of  the  Study  of  Celtic  Literature 
in  prose  and  the  Neiv  Poems  in  verse,  with  Schools  and 
Universities  on  the  Contifient  to  follow  next  year.  Of 
these  something  must  be  said  before  this  chapter  is 
closed. 

On  the  Study  of  Celtic  Literature  is  the  first  book 
of  his  to  which,  as  a  whole,  and  from  his  own  point  of 
view,  we  may  take  rather  serious  objections.  That  it 
has  merits  not  affected  by  these  objections  need  hardly 
be  said ;  indeed  I  think  it  would  not  be  foolish  to  say 
that  it  is  —  or  was  —  even  the  superior  of  the  Llomer 
in  comparative  and  indirect  importance.  In  that  Mr 
xA.rnold  had  but,  at  the  best,  roused  men  to  enter  upon 
new  ways  of  dealing  with  old  and  familiar  matter  ;  in 
this  he  was  leading  them  to  conquest  of  new  realms. 
Now,  as  we  have  seen,  it  was  exactly  this  exploration, 
this  expansion,  of  which  English  was  then  in  most 
need,  just  as  it  is  now  perhaps  in  most  need  of  con- 
centration and  retreat  upon  the  older  acquisitions. 

So  far  so  good ;  but  if  we  go  farther,  we  do  not 
at  first  fare  better.  It  would  be  grossly  unjust  to 
charge  Mr  Arnold  with  all  the  nonsense  which  has 
since  been  talked  about  Celtic  Renascences ;  but  I 
fear  we  cannot  write  all  that  nonsense  off  his  ac- 
count. In  particular,  he  set  an  example,  which  has 
in  this  and  other  matters  been  far  too  widely  fol- 
lowed, of  speaking  without  sufficient  knowledge  of  fact. 


1863-1867.  I05 

It  cannot  be  too  peremptorily  laid  down  that  the 
literary  equivalent  of  a  "revoke"  —  the  literary  act 
after  which,  if  he  does  it  on  purpose,  you  must  not 
play  with  a  man — is  speaking  of  authors  and  books 
which  he  has  not  read  and  cannot  read  in  the  orig- 
inal, while  he  leaves  you  ignorant  of  his  ignorance. 
Tkis  Mr  Arnold  never  committed,  and  could  never 
have  committed.  But  short  of  it,  and  while  escaping 
its  penalty,  a  man  may  err  by  speaking  too  freely 
even  of  what  he  confesses  that  he  does  not  know ; 
and  of  this  minor  and  less  discreditable  sin,  I  own 
(acknowledging  most  frankly  that  I  know  even  less  of 
the  originals  than  he  did),  I  think  Mr  Arnold  was 
here  guilty. 

Exactly  how  much  Gaelic,  Irish,  or  Welsh  Mr 
Arnold  knew  at  first-hand,  I  cannot  say :  he  frankly 
enough  confesses  that  his  knowledge  was  very  closely 
limited.  But  what  is  really  surprising,  is  that  he 
does  not  seem  to  have  taken  much  trouble  to  ex- 
tend  It  at  second-hand.  A  very  few  Welsh  triads 
and  scraps  of  Irish  are  all  that,  even  in  translation, 
he  seems  to  have  consulted  :  he  never,  I  think, 
names  Dafydd  ap  Gw^lym,  usually  put  forward  as 
the  greatest  of  Celtic  poets ;  and  in  the  main  his 
citations  are  derived  either  from  Ossiiui  ("  this  do 
seem  going  far,"  as  an  American  poetess  observes), 
or  else  from  the  Jifabi?wgio?t^  where  some  of  the 
articles  are  positively  known  to  be  late  translations 
of  French  -  English   originals,  and  the  others   are   very 


I06  MATTHEW  ARNOLD. 

uncertain.  You  really  cannot  found  any  safe  literary 
generalisations  on  so  very  small  a  basis  of  such  very 
shaky  matter.  In  fact,  Mr  Arnold's  argument  for 
the  presence  of  "  Celtic  magic,"  &c.,  in  Celtic  poetry 
comes  to  something  like  this.  "  There  is  a  quality 
of  magic  in  Shakespeare,  Keats,  &:c.  ;  this  magic 
must  be  Celtic  :  therefore  it  must  be  in  Celtic 
poetry."  Fill  up  the  double  enthymeme  who  list,  I 
am  not  going  to  endeavour  to  do  so.  I  shall  only 
say  that  two  sentences  give  the  key-note  of  the  book 
as  argument.  "  Rhyme  itself,  all  the  weight  of  evi- 
dence tends  to  show,  came  into  our  poetry  from  the 
Celts."  Now  to  some  of  us  all  the  w^eight  of  evidence 
tends  to  show  that  it  came  from  the  Latins.  "  Our 
only  first-rate  body  of  contemporary  poetry  is  the 
German."  Now  at  the  time  (1867),  for  more  than 
thirty  years,  Germany  had  not  had  a  single  poet  of 
the  first  or  the  second  class  except  Heine,  who,  as 
Mr  Arnold  himself  very  truly  says,  was  not  a  German 
but  a  Jew. 

But  once  more,  what  we  go  to  Mr  Matthew  Arnold  for 
is  not  fact,  it  is  not  argument,  it  is  not  even  learning. 
It  is  phrase,  attitude,  style,  that  by  which,  as  he  says 
admirably  in  this  very  book,  "  what  a  man  has  to  say 
is  recast  and  heightened  in  such  a  manner  as  to  add 
dignity  and  distinction  to  it."  It  is  the  new  critical 
attitude,  the  appreciation  of  literary  beauty  in  and  for 
itself,  the  sense  of  "the  word,"  the  power  of  discern- 
ing  and   the    power  of  reflecting  charm,   the    method 


1 862- 1 86/.  107 

not  more  different  from  the  wooden  deduction  of  the 
old  school  of  critics  than  from  the  merely  unenlight- 
ened and  Philistine  commonness  of  the  reviewers,  his 
earlier  contemporaries,  or  from  the  aimless  "  I  like 
that "  and  "  I  don't  like  this "  which  does  duty  now, 
and  did  then,  and  has  done  always,  for  criticism  itself. 
True,  Mr  Arnold  himself  might  be  wilful,  capricious, 
haphazard ;  true,  he  might  often  be  absolutely  unable 
to  give  any  real  reason  for  the  faith  that  was  in  him ; 
true,  he  sometimes  might  have  known  more  than  he 
did  know  about  his  subject.  But  in  all  these  points 
he  saved  himself:  in  his  wilfulness,  by  the  grace  and 
charm  that  sometimes  attend  caprice ;  in  his  want  of 
reason,  by  his  genuineness  of  faith  itself;  in  his  occa- 
sional lack  of  the  fullest  knowledge,  by  the  admirable 
use  —  not  merely  display  —  which  he  made  of  what 
knowledge  he  had.  There  may  be  hardly  a  page  of 
the  two  books  of  his  lectures  in  which  it  is  not  pos- 
sible to  find  some  opportunity  for  disagreement — some- 
times pretty  grave  disagreement ;  but  I  am  sure  that 
no  two  more  valuable  books,  in  their  kind  and  sub- 
ject, to  their  country  and  time,  have  been  ever  issued 
from  the  press. 

The  New  Poems  make  a  volume  of  unusual  import- 
ance in  the  history  of  poetical  careers.  Mr  Arnold 
lived  more  than  twenty  years  after  the  date  of  their 
publication ;  but  his  poetical  production  during  that 
time  filled  no  more  than  a  few  pages.  At  this  date  he 
was  a  man  of  forty-five — an  age  at  which  the  poetical 


I08  MATTHEW   ARNOLD. 

impulse  has  been  supposed  to  run  jow,  but  perhaps 
with  no  sufficient  reason.  Poets  of  such  very  differ- 
ent types  as  Dryden  and  Tennyson  have  produced 
work  equal  to  their  best,  if  not  actually  their  best, 
at  that  age  and  later.  Mr  Browning  had,  a  few  years 
before,  produced  what  are  perhaps  his  actually  greatest 
volumes,  Mejt  and  Woinen  and  Dramatis  Persona^  the 
one  at  forty-three,  the  other  at  fifty-two.  According 
to  Mr  Arnold's  own  conception  of  poetry-making,  as 
depending  upon  the  subject  and  upon  the  just  and 
artist-like  exposition  of  that  subject,  no  age  should  be 
too  late. 

Certainly  this  age  was  not  too  late  with  him.  The 
contents  all  answered  strictly  enough  to  their  title, 
except  that  Enipedocles  on  Etna  and  some  half-dozen 
of  its  companions  were,  at  Mr  Browning's  request, 
reprinted  from  the  almost  unpublished  volume  of 
1852,  and  that  Thyrsis,  St  Brandan,  A  Southern 
Night,  and  the  Gra?ide  Chartreuse  had  made  maga- 
zine appearances.  Again  the  moment  was  most  im- 
portant. When  Mr  Arnold  had  last  made  (omitting 
with  an  apology  the  "  transient  and  embarrassed 
phantom"  of  Merope)  an  appearance  in  1855,  the 
transition  age  of  English  nineteenth  -  century  poetry 
was  in  full  force.  No  one's  place  was  safe  but 
Tennyson's ;  and  even  his  was  denied  by  some,  in- 
cluding Mr  Arnold  himself,  who  never  got  his  eyes 
quite  clear  of  scales  in  that  matter.  Brownins.  though 
he  had  handed  in  indisputable  proofs,  had  not  yet  had 


1 862- 1 86/.  109 

them  allowed  ;  the  Spasmodics  had  not  disappeared  ;  the 
great  prte-Raphaelite  school  was  but  on  the  way.  The 
critics  knew  not  what  to  think  ;  the  vulgar  thought 
(to  the  tune  of  myriad  copies)  of  Tupper.  Both 
classes,  critic  and  public,  rent  Maud  and  neglected 
Men  and  If 'omen :  The  Defence  of  Guinevere  had  not 
yet  rung  the  matins  -  bell  in  the  ears  of  the  new 
generation. 

Now  things  were  all  altered.  The  mixture  of  popu- 
larity and  perfection  in  the  Idylls  and  the  E7ioch  Arden 
volume — the  title  poem  and  Aylmer's  Field  for  some, 
The  Voyage  and  Tithomis  and  I71  the  Valley  of  Cauterets 
for  others — had  put  Tennyson's  place 

"Beyond  the  arrows,  shouts,  and  views  of  men." 

The  three-volume  collection  of  Browning's  Poenis^  and 
Dramatis  FersoncB  which  followed  to  clench  it,  had 
nearly,  if  not  quite,  done  the  same  for  him.  The  De- 
fence of  Guinevere  and  The  Life  a?id  Death  of  Jason ^ 
Atalanta^  Chastelard,  and  most  of  all  the  Poems  and 
Ballads^  had  launched  an  entirely  new  poetical  school 
with  almost  unexampled  pomp  and  promise  on  the 
world.  The  Spasmodics  were  forgotten,  the  Tupper 
cult  had  been  nearly  (not  yet  quite)  laughed  out  of 
existence.  That  Mr  Arnold's  own  poems  had  had 
any  widely  extended  sale  or  reading  could  hardly  be 
said ;  but  they  were  read  by  those  who  were  or  were 
shortly  to  be  themselves  read.  You  had  not  to  look 
far   in   any   Oxford    college   (I    cannot   speak   of   Cam- 


no  MATTHEW   ARNOLD. 

bridge)  before  you  found  them  on  those  undergraduate 
shelves  which  mean  so  much ;  while  many  who,  from 
general  distaste  to  poetry  or  from  accident,  knew  them 
not,  or  hardly  knew  them,  were  familiar  with  their 
author's  prose  work,  or  at  least  knew  him  as  one 
whom  others  knew. 

The  volume  itself  was  well  calculated  to  take  ad- 
vantage, to  at  least  a  moderate  extent,  of  this  con- 
junction of  circumstance.  At  no  time  was  the  appeal 
of  Mr  Arnold's  poetry  of  the  most  impetuous  or  per- 
emptory order.  And  it  might  be  contended  that  this 
collection  contains  nothing  quite  up  to  the  very  best 
things  of  the  earlier  poems,  to  the  Shakespeare  sonnet, 
to  The  Scholar- Gipsy ^  to  the  Isolatio?i  stanzas.  But 
with  the  majority  of  its  readers  it  was  sure  rather  to 
send  them  to  these  earlier  things  than  to  remind  them 
thereof,  and  its  own  attractions  were  abundant,  various, 
and  strong. 

In  the  poet  himself  there  was  perhaps  a  slight  con- 
sciousness of  "  the  silver  age."     The  prefatory  Stanzas, 
a  title  changed  in  the  collected  works  to  Persistency  of 
Poetry,  sound  this  note — 

*•  Though  the  Muse  be  gone  away, 
Tliough  slie  move  not  earth  to-day, 
Souls,  erewhile  wlio  caught  her  word, 
Ah  !  still  harp  on  what  they  heard." 

A  confession  perhaps  a  little  dangerous,  when  the  Muses 
were  speaking  in  no  uncertain  tones  not  merely  to 
juniors    like    Mr    Morris    and    Mr    Swinburne    but     to 


I862-I867.  Ill 

seniors  like  Tennyson  and  ]5rowning.  But  the  actual 
contents  were  more  than  reassuring.  Of  Em/>edoiies 
it  is  not  necessary  to  speak  again  :  Thyrsis  could  not 
but  charm.     The  famous  line, 

"And  that  sweet  city  with  her  dreaming  spires," 

sets  the  key  dangerously  high  ;  but  it  is  kept  by  the 
magnificent  address  to  the  cuckoo, 

"Too  quick  despairer,  wherefore  wilt  thou  go?' 

and  the  flower-piece  that  follows ;  by  that  other  single 
masterpiece, 

**  The  coronals  of  that  forgotten  time  ;  " 

by  the  more  solemn  splendour  of  the  stanza  beginning 

"And  long  the  way  appears  which  seemed  so  short ;" 

by  the  Signal  tree ;  and  by  the  allegoric  close  with  the 
reassertion  of  the  Scholar.  All  these  things  stand  by 
themselves,  hold  their  sure  and  reserved  place,  even 
in  the  rush  and  crowd  of  the  poetry  of  the  sixties,  the 
richest,  perhaps,  since  the  time  from  1805  to  1822. 

Saint  Brandan,  which  follows,  has  pathos  if  not  great 
power,  and  connects  itself  agreeably  with  those  Celtic 
and  mediaeval  studies  which  had  just  attracted  and 
occupied  Mr  Arnold.  The  sonnets  which  form  the 
next  division  might  be  variously  judged.  None  of 
them  equals  the  Shakespeare ;  and  one  may  legitimately 
hold  the  opinion  that  the  sonnet  was  not  specially 
Mr  Arnold's  form.  Its  greatest  examples  have  always 
been    reached    by    the    reflex,    the    almost    combative, 


112  MATTHEW  ARNOLD. 

action  of  intense  poetic  feeling — Shakespeare's,  Milton's, 
Wordsworth's,  Rossetti's  —  and  intensity  was  not  Mr 
Arnold's  characteristic.  Yet  Austerity  of  Foet?y,  East 
London^  and  Mo7iica^s  Last  Prayer  must  always  stand 
so  high  in  the  second  class  that  it  is  hardly  critical 
weakness  to  allow  them  the  first.  And  then  the  tide 
rises.  Calais  Sands  may  not  be  more  than  very  pretty, 
but  it  is  that,  and  Dover  Beach  is  very  much  more. 
Mr  Arnold's  theological  prepossessions  and  assumptions 
may  appear  in  it,  and  it  may  be  unfortunately  weak  as 
an  argumenti  for  except  the  flood  itself  nothing  is  so 
certain  a  testimony  to  the  flood  as  the  ebb.  j  But  the 
order,  the  purpose,  the  argument,  the  subject,  matter 
little  to  poetry.  The  expression,  the  thing  that  is  not 
the  subject,  the  tendency  outside  the  subject,  which 
makes  for  poetry,  are  here,  and  almost  of  the  very 
best.  Here  you  have  that  passionate  interpretation  of 
life,  W'hich  is  so  different  a  thing  from  the  criticism 
of  it ;  that  marvellous  pictorial  effect  to  w^hich  the  art 
of  line  and  colour  itself  is  commonplace  and  banal, 
and  which  prose  literature  never  attains  except  by  a 
tour  de  force ;  that  almost  more  marvellous  accompani- 
ment of  vowel  and  consonant  music,  independent  of 
the  sense  but  reinforcing  it,  which  is  the  glory  of 
English  poetry  among  all,  and  of  nineteenth -century 
poetry  among  all  English  poetries.  As  is  the  case 
with  most  Englishmen,  the  sea  usually  inspired  Mr 
Arnold  —  it  is  as  natural  to  great  English  poets  to 
leave   the  echo  of  the  very  word  ringing  at   the   close 


1 862- 1 867.  113 

of  their  verse  as  it  was  to  Dante  to  end  with'  "  stars." 
But  it  has  not  often  inspired  any  poet  so  well  as  this, 
nor  anywhere  this  poet  better  than  here.  If  at  any 
time  a  critic  may  without  fatuity  utter  judgment  with 
some  confidence,  it  is  where  he  disagrees  with  the 
sentiment  and  admires  the  poem ;  and  for  my  part  I 
find  in  Dover  Beach,  even  without  the  Merman,  without 
the  Schola}'- Gipsy,  without  IsoIatio7i,  a  document  which 
I  could  be  content  to  indorse  "  Poetry,  sans  phrased 
The  Terrace  at  Berne  has  been  already  dealt  with, 
but  that  mood  for  epicede,  which  was  so  frequent  in 
Mr  Arnold,  finds  in  the  Carfiac  stanzas  adequate,  and 
in  A  Southern  Night  consummate,  expression.  The 
Frag?ne?tt  of  Chorus  of  a  Dejaiteira,  written  long  be- 
fore, but  now  first  published,  has  the  usual  faults  of 
Mr  Arnold's  rhymeless  verse.  It  is  really  quite  im- 
possible, when  one  reads  such  stuff  as — 

**  Thither  in  your  adversity 
Do  you  betake  yourselves  for  light, 
But  strangely  misinterpret  all  you  hear. 
For  you  will  not  put  on 
New  hearts  with  the  inquirer's  holy  robe 
And  purged  considerate  minds  " — 

not  to  ask  what,  poetically  speaking,   is   the  difference 
between  this  and  the  following — 


'O 


"  To  college  in  the  pursuit  of  duty 
Did  I  betake  myself  for  lecture  ; 
But  very  soon  I  got  extremely  wet, 
For  I  had  not  put  on 
The  stout  ulster  appropriate  to  Britain, 
And  my  umbrella  was  at  home." 

H 


114  MATTHEW  ARNOLD. 

But  Palladmm^  if  not  magnificent,  is  reconciling,  the 
Shakespearian  YoutKs  Agitations  beautiful,  and  Grow- 
ing Old  delightful,  not  without  a  touch  of  terror.  It 
is  the  reply,  the  ver?ieimi?:g,  to  Browning's  magnificent 
Rabbi  ben  Ezra,  and  one  has  almost  to  fly  to  that 
stronghold  in  order  to  resist  its  chilling  influence.  But 
it  is  poetry  for  all  that,  and  whatever  there  is  in  it  of 
weakness  is  redeemed,  though  not  quite  so  poetically, 
by  The  Last  Word.  The  Lines  written  in  Lvefisington 
Gardens  (which  had  appeared  with  Empedodes,  but 
were  missed  above)  may  be  half  saddened,  half  en- 
deared to  some  by  their  own  remembrance  of  the 
"  black -crowned  red-boled  "  giants  there  celebrated — 
trees  long  since  killed  by  London  smoke,  as  the  good- 
natured  say,  as  others,  by  the  idiotic  tidiness  of  the 
gardeners,  who  swept  the  needles  up  and  left  the  roots 
without  natural  comfort  and  protection.  And  then, 
after  lesser  things,  the  interesting,  if  not  intensely 
poetical.  Epilogue  to  Lessi?ig^s  Laocoon  leads  us  to  one 
of  the  most  remarkable  of  all  Mr  Arnold's  poems, 
Bacchanalia,  or  the  New  Age.  The  word  remarkable 
has  been  used  advisedly.  Bacchanalia,  though  it  has 
poignant  and  exquisite  poetic  moments,  is  not  one  of 
the  most  specially  poetical  of  its  author's  pieces.  But 
it  is  certainly  his  only  considerable  piece  of  that  really 
poetic  humour  which  is  so  rare  and  delightful  a  thing. 
And,  like  all  poetic  humour,  it  oscillates  between 
cynicism  and  passion  almost  bewilderingly.  For  a 
little  more  of  this  what  pages  and  pages  of  jocularity 


1862-1867.  ii5 

about  Bottles  and  the  Rev.  Esau  Hittall  would  we 
not  have  given  !  what  volumes  of  polemic  with  the 
Giiardia?i  and  amateur  discussions  of  the  Gospel  of 
St  John  !  In  the  first  place,  note  the  metrical  struc- 
ture, the  sober  level  octosyllables  of  the  overture 
changing  suddenly  to  a  dance  -  measure  which,  for  a 
wonder  in  English,  almost  keeps  the  true  dactylic 
movement.      How  effective  is  the  rhetorical  iteration  of 

*  *  The  famous  orators  have  shone, 
The  famous  poets  sung  and  gone," 

and  so  on  for  nearly  half  a  score  of  lines  !  How  perfect 
the  sad  contrast  of  the  refrain — 

*'  Ah  !  so  the  quiet  was  1 
So  was  the  httsh .'" 

how  justly  set  and  felicitously  worded  the  rural  picture 
of  the  opening  !  how  riotous  the  famous  irruption  of  the 
New  Agers  !  how  adequate  the  quiet  moral  of  the  end, 
that  the  Past  is  as  the  Present,  and  more  also !  And 
then  he  went  and  wrote  about  Bottles ! 
"  Progress,"  with  a  splendid  opening — 

"  The  master  stood  upon  the  mount  and  saw — 
He  saw  a  fire  in  his  disciples'  eyes," — 

conducts  us  to  two  other  fine,  though  rhymeless,  dirges. 
In  the  first,  Ritgby  Chapel^  the  intensity  of  feeling 
is  sufficient  to  carry  off  the  lack  of  lyrical  accomplish- 
ment. The  other  is  the  still  better  Ifetfie^s  Grave^ 
and  contains  the  famous  and  slightly  pusillanimous  lines 


Il6  MATTHEW   ARNOLD. 

about  the  "weary  Titan,"  which  are  among  the  best 
known  of  their  author's,  and  form  at  once  the  motto 
and  the  stigma  of  mid-century  Liberal  policy.  And 
then  the  book  is  concluded  by  two  other  elegies — in 
rhyme  this  time — T/ie  Stanzas  written  at  the  Grande 
Chartreuse  and  Ober7nan7i  07ice  more.  They  are,  how- 
ever, elegies  of  a  different  kind,  much  more  self-centred, 
and,  indeed,  little  more  than  fresh  variations  on  "  the 
note,"  as  I  ventured  to  call  it  before.  Their  descriptive 
and  autobiographic  interest  is  great,  and  if  poetry  were 
a  criticism  of  life,  there  is  plenty  of  that  of  them. 

The  third  book — Schools  and  Universities  on  the  Con- 
iine?tt  (1868) — in  which  are  put  the  complete  results  of 
the  second  Continental  exploration — is,  I  suppose,  much 
less  known  than  the  non-professional  work,  though  per- 
haps not  quite  so  unknown  as  the  earlier  report  on 
elementary  education.  By  far  the  larger  part  of  it — 
the  whole,  indeed,  except  a  "General  Conclusion"  of 
some  forty  pages — is  a  reasoned  account  of  the  actual 
state  of  matters  in  France,  Italy,  Germany,  and  Switzer- 
land. It  is  not  exactly  judicial ;  for  the  conclusion — 
perhaps  the  foregone  conclusion  —  obviously  colours 
every  page.  But  it  is  an  excellent  example  (as,  indeed, 
is  all  its  author's  non  -  popular  writing)  of  clear  and 
orderly  exposition — never  arranged  ad  captandiwi^  but 
also  never  "dry."  Indeed  there  certainly  are  some 
tastes,  and  there  may  be  many,  to  which  the  style  is  a 
distinct  relief  after  the  less  quiet  and  more  mannered 
graces  of  some  of  the  rest. 


1862-1867.  117 

Opinions  may  differ  more  as  to  the  value  of  the  book 
as  a  lesson,  or  as  an  argument.  Mr  Arnold  had  started 
witli  a  strong  belief  in  the  desirableness — indeed  of  the 
necessity — of  State-control  of  the  most  thoroughgoing 
kind  m  education  ;  and  he  was  not  at  all  likely  to  miss 
the  opportunity  of  fetching  new  weapons  from  the  very 
arsenals  and  places  d'armes  of  that  system.  He  was 
thoroughly  convinced  that  English  ways  generally,  and 
especially  the  ways  of  English  schools  and  colleges, 
were  wrong ;  and  he  had,  of  course,  no  difficulty  in 
pointing  triumphantly  to  the  fact  that,  if  the  institutions 
of  Continental  countries  differed  in  some  ways  from 
each  other,  they  all  differed  in  nearly  the  same  way 
from  ours.  It  may  undoubtedly  be  claimed  for  him — 
by  those  who  see  any  force  in  the  argument  —  that 
events  have  followed  him.  Education,  both  secondary 
and  university  in  England,  has  to  a  large  extent  gone 
since  on  the  lines  he  indicates;  the  threatened  superi- 
ority of  the  German  bagman  has  asserted  itself  even 
more  and  more ;  the  "  teaching  of  literature "  has 
planted  a  terrible  fixed  foot  in  our  schools  and  colleges. 
But  perhaps  the  weight  usually  assigned  to  this  kind  of 
corroboration  is  rather  imaginary.  That  a  thing  has 
happened  does  not  prove  that  it  ought  to  have  hap- 
pened, except  on  a  theory  of  determinism,  which  puts 
"conduct"  out  of  sight  altogether.  There  are  those 
who  will  still,  in  the  vein  of  Mephistopheles-Akinetos, 
urge  that  the  system  which  gave  us  the  men  who  pulled 
us  out  of  the  Indian  Mutiny  can  stand  comparison  with 


\\ 


Il8  MATTHEW  ARNOLD. 

the  system  which  gave  France  the  authors  of  the 
dSbdcle ;  that  the  successes  of  Germany  over  France 
in  war  have  no  necessary  connection  with  education, 
and  those  of  Germany  over  England  in  commerce, 
diplomacy,  &c.,  still  less.  They  will  even  go  further 
—  some  of  them  —  and  ask  whether  the  Continental 
practices  and  the  Arnoldian  principles  do  not  necessi- 
tate divers  terribly  large  and  terribly  ill-based  assump- 
tions, as  that  all  men  are  educable,  that  the  value  of 
education  is  undiminished  by  its  diffusion,  that  all,  or 
at  least  most,  subjects  are  capable  of  being  made  edu- 
cational instruments,  and  a  great  many  more. 

X)n  the  other  hand,  they  will  cheerfully  grant  that 
Mr  Arnold  never  succumbed  to  that  senseless  belief  in 
examination  which  has  done,  and  is  doing,  such  infinite 
harm.  But  they  will  add  to  the  debit  side  that  the 
account  of  English  university  studies  which  ends  the 
book  was  even  at  the  time  of  writing  so  inaccurate  as 
to  be  quite  incomprehensible,  unless  we  suppose  that 
Mr  Arnold  was  thinking  of  the  days  of  his  own  youth, 
and  not  of  those  with  complete  accuracy.  He  says  "  the 
examination  for  the  degree  of  bachelor  of  arts,  which  we 
place  at  the  end  of  our  three  years'  university  course,  is 
merely  the  Abiturienie?i-exafnen  of  Germany,  the  ^preuve 
du  baccalaur^at  of  France,  placed  in  both  those  countries 
at  the  entrance  to  university  studies  " ;  and  it  is  by  this 
that  he  justifies  Signor  Matteucci's  absurd  description  of 
Oxford  and  Cambridge  as  hauts  lydes.  Now,  in  the 
first  place,  there  is  not  one  single  word  in  this  sentence. 


1 862- 1 86/.  119 

or  in  the  context,  or,  so  far  as  I  remember,  in  the  whole 
book,  about  the  Honours  system,  which  for  very  many 
years  before  1868  had  exalted  the  standard  infinitely 
higher  in  the  case  of  a  very  large  proportion  of  men. 
And  in  the  second  place,  there  is  not  a  word  about  the 
Scholarship  system,  which  in  the  same  way  had  for 
very  many  years  provided  an  entrance  standard  actually 
higher — far  higher  in  some  ways — than  the  concluding 
examinations  of  the  French  baccalaur^at.  My  own  days 
at  Oxford  were  from  1863  to  1868,  the  year  of  Mr 
Arnold's  book.  During  that  time  there  were  always  in 
the  university  some  400  men  who  had  actually  obtained 
scholarships  on  this  standard ;  and  a  very  consider- 
able number  who  had  competed  on  it,  and  done  fairly. 
Whether  Mr  Arnold  shared  Mark  Pattison's  craze  about 
the  abolition  of  the  pass-man  altogether,  I  do  not  know. 
But  he  ought  to  have  known,  and  I  should  think  he 
must  have  known,  that  at  the  time  of  his  writing  the 
mere  and  sheer  pass-man — the  man  whose  knowledge 
was  represented  by  the  minimum  of  Smalls,  Mods,  and 
Greats — was,  if  not  actually  in  a  minority, — in  some 
colleges  at  least  he  was  that — at  any  rate  in  a  pretty 
bare  majority.  With  his  love  of  interference  and  control, 
he  might  have  retorted  that  this  did  not  matter,  that 
the  university  perjnitted  every  one  to  stick  to  the 
minimum.  But  as  a  matter  of  fact  he  suggests  that  it 
provided  no  alternative,  no  fnaximum  or  majtis  at  all. 

By  the  time  that  we  have  now  reached,  that  of  his 
giving  up  the  professorship,  Mr  Arnold's  position  was, 


I20  MATTHEW  ARNOLD. 

for  good  and  for  evil,  mostly  fixed.  When  he  took  up 
the  duties  of  his  chair  he  was,  though  by  no  means  a 
very  young  man  and  already  the  author  of  much  remark- 
able work,  yet  almost  unknown  out  of  Oxford  and  a 
small  official  circle  in  London.  He  had  now,  at  forty- 
five,  not  exactly  popularity,  but  a  very  considerable,  and 
a  very  lively  and  growing,  reputation.  By  far  the  most 
and  the  best  of  his  poetry  was  written ;  but  it  was  only 
just  coming  to  be  at  all  generally  read  or  at  all  justly 
appreciated.  He  had,  partly  in  obeying,  and  partly  in 
working  against  his  official  superiors,  acquired  a  distinct 
position  as  an  educational  reformer.  He  had  become 
something  of  a  figure  in  society.  But,  above  all,  he  had 
proclaimed  with  undoubting  authority,  and  had  ex- 
emplified with  remarkable  and  varied  skill,  a  new  or  at 
least  a  very  greatly  altered  kind  of  literary  criticism.  And 
this  had  already  threatened  incursions  into  domains 
from  which  men  of  letters  as  such  had  generally  kept 
aloof,  or  which,  if  they  had  touched,  they  had  touched 
not  as  men  of  letters.  Something  of  Socrates,  some- 
thing of  Addison,  something  of  Johnson,  mingled  in  Mr 
Arnold's  presentation  of  himself  as,  if  not  exactly  an 
arbiter,  at  any  rate  a  suggester  of  elegances  in  all  things, 
poetry  and  politics,  prose  jand  polite  manners,  public 
thought,  public  morality,  religion  itself.  These  preten- 
sions, if  urged  in  a  less  agreeable  manner,  would  have 
been  intolerable  ;  they  were  not  universally  tolerated  as 
it  was  :  but  the  gifts  and  graces  of  the  critic  made  them 
' — so  far — inoffensive,  even  rather  fascinating,  to  all  save 


1 862- 1 867.  121 

the  least  accommodating  or  the  most  clear-sighted,  and 
to  some  even  of  these. 

And  we  must  remember  that  this  appearance  of  Mr 
Arnold  as  the  mild  and  ingenious  tamer  of  the  ferocious 
manners  of  Britons  coincided  with  far  wider  and  more 
remarkable  innovations.  This  was  the  time,  at  home, 
of  the  second  Parliamentary  Reform,  which  did  at  least 
as  much  to  infringe  the  authority  of  his  enemy  the 
Philistine,  as  the  first  had  done  to  break  the  power  of 
the  half-dreaded,  half-courted  Barbarian.  This  was  the 
time  when,  abroad,  the  long-disguised  and  disorganised 
power  of  Germany  was  to  rearrange  the  map  of  Europe, 
and  to  bring  about  a  considerable  rearrangement  of  Mr 
Arnold's  own  ideas  as  to  the  respective  greatness  of 
foreign  nations.  And  finally  the  walls  of  another 
stronghold  of  British  Philistia,  its  intense  and  apparently 
impregnable  self-satisfaction  with  Free-trade  and  cheap 
money  and  so  forth,  were  tottering  and  crumbling.  A 
blast  against  them  —  indeed  a  series  of  blasts  from 
Chartism  to  the  Latter-day  Pamphlets — had  been  blown 
long  before  by  Carlyle,  in  very  different  tones  from 
Mr  Arnold's.  They  had  lost  their  stoutest  champion  // 
!  and  their  most  eloquent  panegyrist  in  Macaulay.  But  J 
Sadowa  and  household  suffrage  gave  the  final  summons,  j 
if  not  the  final  shake.  Mr  Arnold  had  done  his  best  to  / 
co-operate ;  but  his  object,  to  do  him  justice,  was  to  be 
rather  a  raiser  of  the  walls  of  Thebes  than  an  over- 
thrower  of  those  of  Jericho,  or  even  of  Ashdod.  He 
set  about,  in  all  seriousness,  to  clear  away  the  rubbish 


122  MATTHEW   ARNOLD. 

and  begin  the  re-edification ;  unluckily,  in  but  too  many 
cases,  with  dubious  judgment,  and  by  straying  into 
quarters  where  he  had  no  vocation.  But  he  never 
entirely  neglected  his  real  business  and  his  real  voca- 
tion, and  fortunately  he  returned  to  them  almost  en- 
tirely before  it  was  too  late. 


123 


CHAPTER   IV. 


IN     THE     WILDERNESS. 


That  the  end  of  Mr  Arnold's  tenure  of  the  Professor- 
ship of  Poetry  was  a  most  important  epoch  in  his  life 
is  sufficiently  evident.  In  the  ten  years  that  came  to 
an  end  then,  he  had,  as  two  such  extremely  competent 
judges  as  Mr  Disraeli  and  Crabb  Robinson  in  different 
ways  told  him,^  passed  from  comparative  obscurity  into 

^  Mr  Disraeli's  words  (in  1864)  have  been  referred  to  above  (p. 
100).  They  were  actually  :  "At  that  time  [when  they  had  met  at 
Lord  Houghton's  some  seven  or  eight  years  earlier]  .  .  .  you  your- 
self were  little  known.  Now  you  are  well  known.  You  have  made 
a  reputation,  but  you  will  go  further  yet.  You  have  a  great  future 
before  you,  and  you  deserve  it."  Crabb  Robinson  was  a  much  older 
acquaintance,  and  is  credited,  I  believe,  with  the  remark  far  earlier, 
that  "he  shouldn't  dare  to  be  intimate  "  with  so  clever  a  young  man 
as  Matthew  Arnold.  Very  shortly  before  his  death  in  Febmary 
1867,  he  had  met  Mr  Arnold  in  the  Athenoeum,  and  asked  *"  which 
of  all  my  books  I  should  myself  name  as  the  one  that  had  got  me 
my  great  reputation.  I  said  I  had  not  a  great  reputation,  upon  which 
he  answered  :  'Then  it  is  some  other  Matthew  Arnold  who  writes 
the  books.' "  The  passage,  which  contains  an  odd  prophecy  of  the 
speaker's  own  death,  and  an  interesting  indication  that  Mr  Arnold 
rightly  considered  the  Essays  to  be  "the  book  that  got  him  his 
reputation,"  will  be  found  in  Letters ^  i.  351. 


124  MATTHEW  ARNOLD. 

something  more  than  comparative  prominence.  His 
chair  had  been  for  him  a  real  cathedra,  and  his  deUver- 
ances  from  it  had  always  assumed,  and  had  at  length,  to 
a  great  extent,  achieved,  real  authority.  In  criticism  it 
was  evident  that  if  he  had  not  revealed  positively  novel 
aspects  of  truth,  he  had  formulated  and  put  on  record 
aspects  which  were  presenting  themselves  to  many,  nay, 
most,  of  the  best  critical  minds  of  his  day.  His  criti- 
cism had  drawn  his  poetry  w4th  it,  if  not  into  actual 
popularity,  yet  into  something  like  attention.  His 
attempts  to  obtain  some  other  employment  less  irk- 
some, less  absorbing,  and  more  profitable,  had  indeed 
been  unsuccessful ;  but  he  was  rising  in  his  own  de- 
partment, and  his  work,  if  still  in  part  uncongenial 
and  decidedly  laborious,  appears  to  have  been  much 
less  severe  than  in  earlier  days.  Partly  this  work  it- 
self, partly  his  writings,  and  partly  other  causes  had 
opened  to  him  a  very  large  circle  of  acquaintance, 
which  it  was  in  his  own  power  to  extend  or  contract 
as  he  pleased.  His  domestic  life  was  perfectly  happy, 
if  his  means  were  not  very  great  :  and  his  now  as- 
sured literary  position  made  it  easy  for  him  to  in- 
crease these  means,  not  indeed  largely,  but  to  a  not 
despicable  extent,  by  writing.  The  question  was, 
"What  should  he  write?" 

It  is  probably  idle  ever  to  wish  that  a  man  had  done 
anything  different  from  that  which  he  has  done.  With- 
out being  a  rigid  Determinist,  one  may  be  pretty  well 
convinced  tnat  the  actual  conduct  is  the  joint  result  of 


IN    THE   WILDERNESS.  1 25 

abilities,  and  of  desires,  and  of  opportunity  to  exercise 
them,  and  that  the  man,  had  he  really  done  otherwise, 
would  have  been  unsuccessful  or  unhappy  or  both.  But 
I  fear  that  if  I  had  been  arbiter  of  Mr  Arnold's  fate  at 
this  moment  I  should  have  arranged  it  differently.  He 
should  have  given  us  more  poems — the  man  who,  far 
later,  wrote  the  magnificent  Westininster  Abbey  on  such 
a  subject  as  Dean  Stanley,  had  plenty  more  poetry  in 
his  sack.  And  in  prose  he  should  have  given  us  infinite 
essays,  as  many  as  De  Quincey's  or  as  Sainte-Beuve's 
own,  and  more  than  Hazlitt's,  of  the  kind  of  the  Heine 
and  the  Joubert  earlier,  of  the  Wordsworth  and  the 
Byron  later.  I  can  see  no  reason  why,  in  the  twenty- 
one  years'  lease  of  life  upon  which  he  now  entered,  he 
should  not  have  produced  a  volume  a-year  of  these, — 
there  are  more  than  enough  subjects  in  the  various 
literatures  that  he  knew ;  and  though  it  is  possible  that 
in  such  extended  application  his  method  might  have 
proved  monotonous,  or  his  range  have  seemed  narrow, 
it  is  not  likely.  To  complete  the  thing,  I  should  have 
given  him,  instead  of  his  inspectorship,  a  headship  at 
Oxford,  for  which,  it  seems  to  me,  he  was  admirably 
fitted.  But  Dis  aliter  visum  :  at  least  it  seemed  other- 
wise good  to  Mr  Arnold  himself  as  far  as  his  literary 
employments  were  concerned,  and  the  gods  did  not 
interfere. 

We  have  seen  that  he  had,  some  years  before,  con- 
ceived the  ambitious  idea  of  changing  the  mind  of 
England  on  a  good  many  points  by  no  means  merely 


126  MATTHEW  ARNOLD. 

literary ;  and  he  seems,  not  altogether  unnaturally,  to 
have  thought  that  now  was  the  time  to  apply  seriously 
to  that  work.  His  tenure  of  the  Oxford  chair  had 
given  him  the  public  ear  ;  and  the  cessation  of  that 
tenure  had  removed  any  official  seal  of  etiquette  which 
it  might  have  laid  on  his  own  lips.  A  far  less  alert 
and  acute  mind  than  his  must  have  seen  that  the 
Reform  troubles  of  1866  and  the  "leap  in  the  dark" 
of  1867  were  certain  to  bring  about  very  great  changes 
indeed  at  home ;  and  that  the  war  of  the  first-named 
year  meant  the  alteration  of  many  things  abroad.  He 
at  least  thought — and  there  was  some  justification  of  a 
good  many  kinds  for  him  in  thinking — that  intellectual 
changes,  of  importance  equal  to  the  political,  were 
coming  or  come  upon  the  world.  And  so  for  a 
time  he  seems  to  have  grown  rather  cold  towards  the 
Muses,  his  earliest  and  always  his  truest  loves.  Social, 
political,  and  religious  matters  tempted  him  away  from 
literature ;  and  for  a  matter  of  ten  years  it  can  hardly  be 
said  that  he  had  anything  to  do  with  her  except  to  take 
her  name  in  vain  in  the  title  of  by  far  his  worst,  as  it 
was  by  far  his  most  popular,  volume. 

It  has  been  hinted  in  a  note  on  one  of  the  early  pages 
in  this  book  that  the  secret  of  this  unfortunate  twist  is 
at  least  partly  to  be  found  in  the  peculiar  character  of 
Mr  Arnold's  official  employment.  For  nearly  twenty 
years  he  had  been  constantly  thrown  into  contact  with 
the  English  Dissenters ;  and,  far  earlier  than  the  time 
which  we  have  reached,  they  seem  not  only,  in  familiar 


IN   THE   WILDERNESS.  12/ 

phrase,  to  have  "got  upon  his  nerves,"  but  to  have 
affected  his  brain.  He  saw  all  things  in  Dissent — or, 
at  least,  in  the  middle-class  Philistine  Dissenter.  His 
Philistia  is  not  in  the  least  a  true  portrait  of  the  aver- 
age middle-class  household  thirty  or  forty  years  ago ; 
though,  I  daresay  (I  have  little  direct  knowledge),  it  is 
not  an  unfair  one  of  the  average  Dissenting  middle- 
class  household.  The  religion  which  Mr  Arnold  at- 
tacks is  not  the  religion  of  the  Church  of  England  at 
all,  or  only  of  what  was  even  then  a  decaying  and  un- 
influential  part  of  it,  the  extremer  and  more  intolerant 
sect  of  the  Evangelicals.  Once  more,  I  cannot  from 
personal  knowledge  say  whether  this  portrait  was  true 
of  Dissent,  but  I  can  believe  it. 

Now,  to  derive  an  idea  of  England  from  the  English 
Dissenter  is  and  was  absurd.  Politically,  indeed,  he 
had  only  too  much  power  between  1832  and  1866, 
from  the  tradition  which  made  Liberal  politicians  fond 
of  petting  him.  Socially,  intellectually,  and  to  a  great 
extent  religiously,  he  had  next  to  no  power  at  all.  To 
take  the  average  manager  of  a  "  British  "  school  as 
the  average  representative  of  the  British  nation  was 
the  wildest  and  most  mischievous  of  confusions.  Yet 
this  practically  was  the  basis  of  Mr  Arnold's  crusade 
between    1867   and   1877. 

The  First  Blast  of  the  Trumpet  was,  intentionally  no 
doubt,  the  last  of  the  Oxford  lectures,  and  for  that  very 
reason  a  rather  gentle  and  insinuating  one.  Culture 
and  its  Enemies^  which  was  the  origin  and  first  part,  so 


128  MATTHEW  ARNOLD. 

to  say,  of  Culture  and  Anarchy^  carried  the  campaign 
begun  in  the  Essays  i?t  C?'iticism  forward ;  but  only 
in  the  most  cautious  manner,  a  caution  no  doubt  partly 
due  to  the  fact  of  the  author's  expressed,  and  very 
natural  and  proper,  intention  of  closing  his  professorial 
exercises  with  the  bocca  dolce.  Still  this  is  at  least  con- 
ceivably due  to  the  fact  that  the  boldest  extension  of 
the  campaign  itself  had  not  definitely  entered,  or  at 
least  possessed,  the  author's  mind.  A  considerable 
time,  indeed  from  July  1867  to  January  1868,  passed 
before  the  publication  of  the  lecture  as  an  article  in 
the  Comhill  was  followed  up  by  the  series  from  the 
latter  month  to  August,  which  bore  the  general  title 
of  Autarchy  a?td  Authority^  and  completed  the  material 
of  Culture  and  Anarchy  itself.  This,  as  a  book,  ap- 
peared in    1869. 

It  began,  according  to  the  author's  favourite  manner, 
which  was  already  passing  into  something  like  a 
mannerism,  with  a  sort  of  half- playful,  half -serious 
battery  against  a  living  writer  (in  this  case  Mr  Frederic 
Harrison),  and  with  a  laudatory  citation  from  a  dead 
one  (in  this  case  Bishop  Wilson).  Mr  Harrison  had 
blasphemed  "  the  cant  about  culture,"  and  Mr  Arnold 
protests  that  culture's  only  aim  is  in  the  Bishop's  words, 
"  to  make  reason  and  the  will  of  God  prevail."  In  the 
first  chapter,  famous  thenceforward  in  English  literature 
by  its  title,  borrowed  from  Swift,  of  "  Sweetness  and 
Light,"  we  have  the  old  rallyings  of  the  Daily  Telegraph 
and  the  Nonconformist.     Then  the  general  view  is  laid 


IN   THE   WILDERNESS.  1 29 

down,  and  is  developed  in  those  that  follow,  but  still  with 
more  of  a  political  than  a  religious  bent,  and  with  the 
political  bent  itself  chiefly  limited  to  the  social  aspect. 

"  Doing  as  one  Likes  "  scatters  a  mild  rain  of  ridicule 
on  this  supposed  fetich  of  all  classes  in  England ;  and 
then,  the  very  famous,  if  not  perhaps  very  felicitous, 
nickname-classification  of  "Barbarian-Philistine-Popu- 
lace" is  launched,  defended,  discussed  in  a  chapter 
to  itself.  To  do  Mr  Arnold  justice,  the  three  classes 
are,  if  not  very  philosophically  defined,  very  impartially 
and  amusingly  rallied,  the  rallier  taking  up  that  part 
of  humble  Philistine  conscious  of  his  own  weaknesses, 
which,  till  he  made  it  slightly  tiresome  by  too  long  a 
run,  was  piquant  enough.  The  fourth  chapter,  "  Heb- 
raism and  Hellenism,"  coasts  the  sands  and  rocks  (on 
which,  as  it  seems  to  some,  Mr  Arnold  was  later  to 
make  shipwreck)  very  nearly  in  the  title  and  rather  nearly 
in  the  contents,  but  still  with  a  fairly  safe  offing.  The 
opposition  might  be  put  too  bluntly  by  saying  that 
"  Hellenism  "  represents  to  Mr  Arnold  the  love  of  truth 
at  any  price,  and  "  Hebraism  "  the  love  of  goodness  at 
any  price ;  but  the  actual  difference  is  not  far  from  this, 
or  from  those  of  knowing  and  doing,  fear  of  stupidity 
and  fear  of  sin,  &:c.  We  have  the  quotation  from  Mr 
Carlyle  about  Socrates  being  "terribly  at  ease  in  Zion," 
the  promulgation  of  the  word  Renascence  for  Renais- 
sance, and  so  forth.  "  Porro  unum  est  necessarium," 
a  favourite  tag  of  Mr  Arnold's,  rather  holds  up  another 
side  of  the  same  lesson   than  continues  it  in  a  fresh 

1 


130  MATTHEW  ARNOLD. 

direction  ;  and  then  "  Our  Liberal  Practitioners  "  brings 
it  closer  to  politics,  but  (since  the  immediate  subject  is 
the  Disestablishment  of  the  Irish  Church)  nearer  also 
to  the  quicksands.  Yet  Mr  Arnold  still  keeps  away 
from  them ;  though  from  what  followed  it  would  seem 
that  he  could  only  have  done  so  by  some  such  tour  de 
force  as  the  famous  "  clubhauling "  in  Peter  Sifnple. 
Had  Culture  and  Anarchy  stood  by  itself,  it  would 
have  been,  though  very  far  from  its  author's  master- 
piece, an  interesting  document  both  in  regard  to  his 
own  mental  history  and  that  of  England  during  the 
third  quarter  of  the  century,  containing  some  of  his 
best  prose,  and  little,  if  any,  of  his  worst  sense. 

But  your  crusader — still  more  your  anti-crusader — 
never  stops,  and  Mr  Arnold  was  now  pledged  to  this 
crusade  or  anti-crusade.  In  October  1869  he  began, 
still  in  the  Cornhill, — completing  it  by  further  instal- 
ments in  the  same  place  later  in  the  year,  and  pub- 
lishing it  in  1870, — the  book  called  St  Paul  and  Pro- 
testantism^ where  he  necessarily  exchanges  the  mixed 
handling  of  Culture  and  Anarchy  for  a  dead-set  at  the 
religious  side  of  his  imaginary  citadel  of  Philistia.  The 
point  of  at  least  ostensible  connection  —  of  real  de- 
parture— is  taken  from  the  "  Hebraism  and  Hellenism  " 
contrast  of  the  earlier  book ;  and  the  same  contrast  is 
strongly  urged  throughout,  especially  in  the  coda^  "A 
Comment  on  Christmas."  But  this  contrast  is  gradually 
shaped  into  an  onslaught  on  Puritanism,  or  rather  on 
its  dogmatic  side,  for  its  appreciation  of  "  conduct "  of 


IN   THE  WILDERNESS.  13I 

morality  is  ever  more  and  more  eulogised.  As  regards 
the  Church  of  England  herself,  the  attack  is  oblique ; 
in  fact,  it  is  disclaimed,  and  a  sort  of  a  Latitudinarian 
Union,  with  the  Church  for  centre,  and  dogma  left  out, 
is  advocated.  Another  of  our  Arnoldian  friends,  the 
"  Zeit-Geist,"  makes  his  appearance,  and  it  is  more  than 
hinted  that  one  of  the  most  important  operations  of 
this  spirit  is  the  exploding  of  miracles.  The  book  is 
perfectly  serious — its  seriousness,  indeed,  is  quite  evi- 
dently deliberate  and  laboured,  so  that  the  author 
does  not  even  fear  to  appear  dull.  But  it  is  still 
admirably  written,  as  well  as  studiously  moderate  and 
reverent ;  no  exception  can  be  taken  to  it  on  the  score 
of  taste,  whatever  may  be  taken  on  the  score  of  ortho- 
doxy from  the  one  side,  where  no  doubt  the  author 
would  hasten  to  plead  guilty,  or  on  those  of  logic, 
history,  and  the  needs  of  human  nature  on  the  other, 
where  no  doubt  his  "  not  guilty "  would  be  equally 
emphatic. 

The  case  is  again  altered,  and  very  unfortunately 
altered,  in  the  next,  the  most  popular  and,  as  has  been 
said,  the  most  famous  of  the  series — its  zenith  at  once 
and  its  nadir — Literature  and  Dogma.  A  very  much 
smaller  part  of  this  had  appeared  in  magazine  form  ; 
indeed,  the  contents  of  St  Paul  a?id  Protestantism  itself 
must  have  seemed  odd  in  that  shape,  and  only  strong 
sympathies  on  the  part  of  the  editor  could  have  ob- 
tained admission  for  any  part  of  Literature  and  Dogma, 
Much  of  it  must  have  been  written  amid  the  excitement 


132  MATTHEW  ARNOLD. 

of  the  French-Prussian  War,  when  the  English  public 
was  athirst  for  "  skits "  of  all  sorts,  and  when  Mr 
Arnold  himself  was  "i'  the  vein,"  being  engaged  in 
the  composition  of  much  of  the  matter  of  Friendship's 
Garland.  St  Paul  and  Protestantis^n  had  had  two 
editions  in  the  same  year  {^Culture  and  Anaixhy^  a  far 
better  thing,  waited  six  for  its  second),  and  altogether 
the  state  of  things  was  such  as  to  invite  any  author  to 
pursue  the  triumph  and  partake  the  gale.  And  he 
might  at  first  flatter  himself  that  he  had  caught  the 
one  and  made  cyclone-use  of  the  other ;  for  the  book, 
appearing  at  the  end  of  1872,  with  the  date  of  1873, 
passed  through  three  editions  in  that  year,  a  fourth  in 
1874,  and  a  fifth  two  years  later.  It  was  thus  by  far 
Mr  Arnold's  most  popular  book ;  I  repeat  also  that  it 
is  quite  his  worst. 

That  it  was  in  hopelessly  bad  taste  here  and  there — 
in  taste  so  bad  that  Mr  Arnold  himself  later  cut  out 
the  most  famous  passage  of  the  book,  to  which  accord- 
ingly we  need  here  only  allude — can  be  denied  by  no- 
body except  those  persons  who  hold  "good  form"  to 
be,  as  somebody  or  other  puts  it,  "an  insular  British 
delusion  of  the  fifties  and  sixties."  But  this  excision 
of  his  and,  I  think,  some  others,  besides  the  "citations 
and  illustrations "  which  he  confesses  to  having  ex- 
cluded from  the  popular  edition,  may  give  us  the  wel- 
come leave  to  deal  very  briefly  with  this  side  of  the 
matter  in  other  respects  also.  We  may  pass  over  the 
fun  which  Mr  Arnold  had  with  Archbishop  Thomson 


IN   THE    WILDF.RNESS.  1 33 

(who,  whatsoe'er  the  failings  on  his  part,  was  at  any  rate 
a  logician)  on  the  theory  of  causation  ;  with  the  Uni- 
versity of  Cambridge  about  honwium  divomciue  volup- 
tas  abna  Venus  (I  have  forgotten  what  was  the  bear- 
ing of  this  joke,  and  it  is  probably  not  worth  inquiring 
into) ;  with  the  Bishop  of  Gloucester  about  the  Per- 
sonality of  God ;  with  the  Athanasian  Creed,  and  its 
"  science  got  ruffled  by  fighting."  These  things,  as 
"form,"  class  themselves;  one  mutters  something  well 
known  about  risu  inepto^  and  passes  on.  Such  a  tone 
on  such  a  subject  can  only  be  carried  off  completely  by 
the  gigantic  strength  of  Swift,  though  no  doubt  it  is 
well  enough  in  keeping  with  the  merely  negative  and 
destructive  purpose  of  Voltaire.  It  would  be  cruel  to 
bring  Literature  a7id  Dogma  into  competition  with  A 
Tale  oj  a  Tub ;  it  would  be  more  than  unjust  to 
bring  it  into  comparison  with  Le  Taureau  bia?ic.  And 
neither  comparison  is  necessary,  because  the  great 
fault  of  Literature  a7td  Dogma  appears,  not  when  it 
is  considered  as  a  piece  of  doubtful  or  not  doubtful 
taste,  but  when  it  is  regarded  as  a  serious  composition. 
In  the  first  place,  the  child-like  fashion  in  which  Mr 
Arnold  swallowed  the  results  of  that  very  remarkable 
"  science,"  Biblical  criticism,  has  always  struck  some 
readers  with  astonishment  and  a  kind  of  terror.  This 
new  La  Fontaine  asking  everybody,  "  Avez  -  vous  lu 
Kuenen  ? "  is  a  lesson  more  humbling  to  the  pridp  of 
literature  than  almost  any  that  can  be  found.  "The 
prophecy  of  the  details  of  Peter's  death,"  we  are  told  in 


134  MATTHEW  ARNOLD. 

Literature  and  Dogma,  "  is  almost  certainly  an  addition 
after  the  event,  because  it  is  not  at  all  in  the  manner 
ofjesus.^^  Observe  that  we  have  absolutely  no  details, 
no  evidence  of  any  sort  whatever,  outside  the  Gospels 
for  the  "  manner  of  Jesus."  It  is  not,  as  in  some  at 
least  of  the  more  risky  exercises  of  profane  criticism  in 
a  similar  field,  as  if  we  had  some  absolutely  or  almost 
absolutely  authenticated  documents,  and  others  to  judge 
by  them.  External  evidence,  except  for  the  mere  fact 
of  Christ's  existence  and  death,  we  have  none.  So  you 
must,  by  the  inner  light,  pick  and  choose  out  of  the  very 
same  documents,  resting  on  the  very  same  authority, 
what,  according  to  your  good  pleasure,  is  "in  the 
manner  of  Jesus,"  and  then  black-mark  the  rest  as  being 
not  so.  Of  course,  when  Mr  Arnold  thus  wrote,  the 
method  had  not  been  pushed  ad  al)sii?'du?n,  as  it  was 
later  by  his  friend  M.  Renan  in  the  Histoire  d^ Israel,  to 
the  dismay  and  confusion  of  no  less  intelligent  and  un- 
orthodox a  critic  than  his  other  friend,  M.  Scherer.  But 
it  is  more  or  less  the  method  of  all  Biblical  criticism  of 
this  sort,  and  Mr  Arnold  follows  it  blindly. 

Again,  the  chief  bent  of  the  book  is  to  establish  that 
"  miracles  do  not  happen."  Alas !  it  is  Mr  Arnold's 
unhappy  lot  that  if  miracles  do  happen  his  argument 
confessedly  disappears,  while  even  if  miracles  do  not 
happen  it  is,  for  his  purpose,  valueless.  Like  almost 
all  critics  of  his  class  recently,  especially  like  Professor 
Huxley  in  another  division,  he  appears  not  to  com- 
prehend   what,    to    the    believers    in    the    supernatural, 


IN   THE   WILDERNESS.  1 35 

the  supernatural  means.  He  applies,  as  they  all  apply, 
the  tests  of  the  natural,  and  says,  *'  Now  really,  you  know, 
these  tests  are  destructive."  He  says — he  cannot  prove 
— that  miracles  do  not  happen  now ;  his  adversaries,  if 
they  were  wise,  would  simply  answer,  '•'■  AprcsV^  Do 
any  of  them  pretend  to  prescribe  to  their  God  that  His 
methods  shall  be  always  the  same,  or  that  those  methods 
shall  stand  the  tests  of  the  laboratory  and  the  School  of 
Charters?  that  He  shall  give  *'a  good  title,"  like  a  man 
who  is  selling  a  house  ?  Some  at  least  would  rather  not ; 
they  would  feel  appallingly  little  interest  in  a  Divinity  after 
this  sworn -attorney  and  chartered-accountant  fashion, 
who  must  produce  vouchers  for  all  His  acts.  And 
further  (to  speak  with  reverence),  the  Divinity  whom 
they  do  worship  would  be  likely  to  answer  Mr  Arnold  in 
the  words  of  a  prophet  of  Mr  Arnold's  own — 

**  Du  gleichst  dem  Geist  den  du  begreifst, 
Nicht  Mir  ! " 

But  this  is  not  all.  There  is  not  only  begging  of 
the  question  but  ignoring  of  the  issue.  Literature  and 
Dogma,  to  do  it  strict  justice,  is  certainly  not,  in  inten- 
tion at  any  rate,  a  destructive  book.  It  is  meant,  and 
meant  very  seriously,  to  be  constructive — to  provide  a 
substitute  for  the  effete  religion  of  Hooker  and  Wilson, 
of  Laud  and  Pusey,  as  well  as  for  that  of  Baxter  and 
Wesley  and  Mr  Miall.  This  new  religion  is  to  have  for 
its  Jachin  Literature — that  is  to  say,  a  delicate  aesthetic 
appreciation  of  all  that  is  beautiful  in  Christianity  and  out 


13^  MATTHEW  ARNOLD. 

of  it;  and  for  its  Boaz  Conduct — that  is  to  say,  a  morality 
at  least  as  rigid  as  that  of  the  purest  Judaism,  though 
more  amiable.  If  dogma  is  to  be  banished,  so  is  any- 
thing like  licence ;  and  in  the  very  book  itself  Mr 
Arnold  formulated,  against  his  once  (and  still  partly) 
beloved  France,  something  like  that  denunciation  of 
her  worship  of  Lubricity  which  he  afterwards  put  more 
plainly  still.  Even  Hellenism,  the  lauded  Hellenism,  is 
told  to  mend  its  ways  (indeed  there  was  need  for  it),  and 
the  Literature  -  without  -  Dogmatist  will  have  to  behave 
himself  with  an  almost  Pharisaic  correctness,  though  in 
point  of  belief  he  is  to  be  piously  Saclducee. 

Now  this  is  all  very  pretty  and  very  creditable,  but  it 
will  not  work.  The  goods,  to  use  the  vulgar  but  precise 
formula  of  English  law,  "are  not  of  the  nature  and 
quality  demanded  by  the  purchaser."  Nobody  wants  a 
religion  of  that  sort.  Conduct  is  good  ;  poetic  appreci- 
ation is  perhaps  better,  though  not  for  the  general.  But 
then  religion  happens  to  be  something  different  from 
either,  though  no  doubt  closely  connected  with  both. 
Mr  Arnold  does  not  exactly  offer  us  a  stone  for  bread, 
but  he  does,  like  the  benevolent  French  princess  in  the 
story,  offer  us  pie-crust.  Pie-crust  is  a  good  thing ;  it  is 
a  close  connection  of  bread  ;  but  it  will  not  do  for  a  sub- 
stitute, and,  in  addition,  it  is  much  more  difficult  for 
the  general  to  obtain.  Moreover,  there  is  a  serious,  a 
historical,  difficulty  about  Conduct  plus  poetic  apprecia- 
tion, but  7tiinus  what  we  call  religion.  Mr  Arnold,  in 
a    stately  sonnet,  has    told  us  that  Sophocles    was    his 


IN    THE   WILDERNESS.  1 37 

ideal  as  a  life -philosopher  who  was  also  a  poet.  He 
knew,  presumably,  the  stories  told  about  Sophocles  in 
Athenceus,  and  though  these  might  be  idle  scandal,  he 
knew  far  too  much  not  to  be  aware  that  there  is  nothing 
intrinsically  impossible  about  them.  It  would  have  been 
rather  interesting  to  hear  him  fully  on  this  subject.  But 
he  v.-as  too  busy  with  expatiating  on  the  sweet  reason- 
ableness of  Jesus  and  "  the  Abcrglaube  of  the  Second 
Advent "  to  trouble  himself  with  awkward  matters  of 
this  kind  at  the  moment. 

It  may  be  suspected,  however,  that  he  did  trouble 
himself  with  them,  or  with  something  like  them,  after- 
wards. The  book — a  deliberate  provocation — naturally 
found  plenty  of  respondents,  though  I  do  not  remember 
that  any  one  smashed  it,  as,  for  instance.  Dean  Mansel 
could  have  done  if  he  had  been  alive,  or  as  Cardinal 
Newman  could,  had  he  been  still  in  the  fold.  Mr 
Arnold  was  perhaps  not  less  really  disquieted  by  its 
comparative  popularity.  For  he  had  quite  enough  of 
Phocion  in  him  to  feel,  if  not  to  say,  that  he  must  have 
said  something  at  least  ambiguous,  when  the  multitude 
applauded.  At  any  rate,  though  the  ill-omened  series 
did  not  cease,  nothing  further  appeared  in  it  which 
showed  the  tone  of  Literature  and  Dogma.  Indeed,  of 
the  concluding  volumes,  God  and  the  Bible  and  Last 
Essays  on  Church  and  Religion,  the  first  is  an  elaborate 
and  rather  anxious  apology,  and  the  second  a  collection 
of  diverse  and  comparatively  "anodyne"  essays.  It  is 
significant  —  as   showing   how  much   of  the  success  of 


138  MATTHEW  ARNOLD. 

Literature  and  Dogma  had  been  a  success  of  scandal — 
that  neither  of  these  volumes  enjoyed  the  least  popular- 
ity. God  and  the  Bible  was  never  reprinted  till  the 
popular  edition  of  the  series  thus  far  in  1884 ;  and  Last 
Essays  was  never  reprinted  at  all,  or  had  not  been  up 
to  the  date  of  the  invaluable  Bibliography  of  the  works. 
Indeed  the  copies  now,  1899,  on  sale  appear  to  be  of 
the  first  edition.  This  cool  reception  does  not  discredit 
either  Barbarians  or  Philistines  or  Populace.  There  are 
good  things  in  the  Last  Essays  (to  which  we  shall 
return),  but  the  general  effect  of  them  is  that  of  a 
man  who  is  withdrawing  from  a  foray,  not  exactly 
beaten,  but  unsuccessful  and  disgusted,  and  is  trying 
to  cover  his  retreat  by  alarums  and  excursions. 

God  and  the  Bible  tells  much  the  same  tale.  It 
originally  appeared  by  instalments  in  the  Contemporary 
Revieiv^  where  it  must  have  been  something  of  a  choke- 
pear  even  for  the  readers  of  that  then  young  and 
thoughtful  periodical.  Unless  the  repher  has  the  vigour 
of  Swift,  or  at  least  of  Bentley,  the  adroitness  in  fence  of 
Pascal,  or  at  least  of  Voltaire,  "  replies,  duplies,  quad- 
ruples "  are  apt  to  be  wofuUy  tedious  reading,  and  Mr 
Arnold  was  rather  a  veles  than  a  triarius  of  controversy. 
He  could  harass,  but  he  did  not  himself  stand  harass- 
ing very  well ;  and  here  he  was  not  merely  the  object 
of  attacks  from  all  sides,  but  was  most  uneasily  conscious 
that,  in  some  cases  at  least,  he  did  not  wish  his  enemies 
to  destroy  each  other.  He  had  absolutely  no  sympathy 
with  the  rabid  anti- Christianity  of  Clifford,  very  little 


IN    THE   WILDERNESS.  1 39 

with  the  mere  agnosticism  of  Huxley ;  he  wanted  to  be 
allowed  to  take  just  so  much  Biblical  criticism  as  suited 
him  and  no  more.  He  wished  to  prove,  in  his  own 
remarkable  way,  the  truth  and  necessity  of  Christianity, 
and  to  this  wish  the  contradictions  of  sinners  were  too 
manifold.  One  must  be  stony-hearted  not  to  feel  some 
pity  for  him,  as,  just  when  he  thinks  he  has  evaded  an 
orthodox  brick,  the  tile  of  a  disbeliever  in  the  Fourth 
Gospel  whizzes  at  him  ;  or  as,  while  he  is  trying  to 
patch  up  his  romantic  reconstructions  of  imaginary 
Jewish  history  and  religion,  the  push  of  some  aggress- 
ive reviewer  bids  him  make  good  his  challenge  to  meta- 
physical theologians.     But  this  interest  is  but  passing. 

In  the  Preface  there  is  indeed  some  of  the  old  attempt 
at  liveliness.  Professor  Clifford  himself,  then  dead,  is 
disposed  of  with  a  not  ungraceful  mixture  of  pity  and 
satire ;  Messrs  Moody  and  Sankey  are  not  unpleasantly 
rallied  ;  Satan  and  Tisiphone,  Mr  Ruskin  and  Sir  Robert 
Phillimore,  once  more  remind  one  of  the  groves  of 
Blarney  or  the  more  doubtful  chorus  in  the  Anti-Jacobin. 
But  the  apologist  is  not  really  light-hearted  :  he  cannot 
keep  the  more  solemn  part  of  his  apologia  out  of  the 
Preface  itself,  and  assures  us  that  the  story  of  Adam's 
fall  "is  all  a  legend.  It  never  really  happened,  any  of 
it."  Again  one  asks  Mr  Arnold,  as  seriously  as  possible, 
"  How  do  you  know  that  ?  On  your  own  calculus,  with 
your  own  estimate  of  evidence,  how  is  it  possible  for 
you  to  know  that  ?  You  may,  on  your  principles,  say 
that  you  are  insufficiently  persuaded  that  it  did  happen  ; 


I40  MATTHEW  ARNOLD. 

but  how  can  you,  without  preternatural  revelation  (the 
very  thing  you  will  not  admit)  say  that  it  did  notl 
Surely  there  is  some  want  of  intellectual  seriousness  in 
thus  lightly  ignoring  every  rule  of  law  and  logic,  of 
history  and  of  common-sense  ?  " 

But  the  embarrassment  thus  revealed  naturally  shows 
itself  even  more  in  the  book  itself,  notwithstanding  the 
fact  that  Mr  Arnold  expressly  declines  to  reply  to  those 
who  have  attacked  Literature  a?id  Dogfjia  as  anti- 
Christian  and  irreligious.  Not  even  by  summarily 
banishing  this  not  inconsiderable  host  can  he  face  the 
rest  comfortably  :  and  he  has  to  resort  to  the  strangest 
reasons  of  defence,  to  the  most  eccentric  invitation  of 
reinforcements  from  afar. 

The  strangest  of  all  these,  the  clearest  proof  in  itself 
of  flurry  and  sense  of  need,  is  exhibited  in  his  summon- 
ing— of  all  wonderful  things — of  Comparative  Philology 
to  the  rescue  of  Literature.  To  rebut  the  criticism  on 
his  denial  of  a  Personal  God,  he  takes  refuge  in  the 
ethnological  meaning  of  Deus,  which,  it  seems,  is  "  Shin- 
ing." The  poor  plain  mind,  already  staggered  by  Mr 
Arnold's  private  revelations  as  to  what  did  not  happen 
6000  years  ago  (or  earlier)  in  the  garden  of  Eden,  quite 
succumbs  before  this  privilegium  of  omniscience. 
One  had  thought  that  the  results  of  philology  and  ety- 
mology of  this  sort  were  extremely  ingenious  guesses,  to 
be  admitted  in  so  far  as  they  do  not  conflict  with  facts, 
and  till  the  next  guess  comes,  but  nothing  more.  Lo ! 
they  arc  (juoted  as  if  they  were  on  a  par  with  "  two  and 


IN   THE   WILDERNESS.  141 

two  make  four,"  or  the  law  of  Excluded  Middle.  We 
may  not  take  Moses  and  the  prophets  without  proof, 
but  Curtius  and  Professor  Max  Miiller  may  speak,  and 
we  must  but  hear.  And  later,  when  Mr  Arnold  is  trying 
to  cope  with  Descartes,  he  flies  for  refuge  to  "  the  roots 
as,  bhu,  and  sta^ 

One  is  tempted  rather  to  laugh  at  this ;  but  on  some 
sides  it  is  very  serious.  That  no  God  of  any  religion  can 
be  more  of  a  mere  hypothesis  than  as^  bhu,  and  sfa,  never 
seems  to  have  occurred  to  Mr  Arnold  for  one  moment, 
nor  that  he  was  cutting  the  throat  of  his  own  argument. 
We  must  not,  however,  fall  into  his  own  mistake  and  quad- 
ruplicate to  his  duply.  It  may  be  sufficient  to  say  that 
the  long  defence  of  the  Fourth  Gospel  which  this  book 
contains  is  one  of  the  oddest  things  in  all  hterature. 
What,  on  Mr  Arnold's  principles,  it  matters  whether  the 
Fourth  Gospel  was  written  in  the  first  century,  the  fourth, 
or  the  fourteenth,  it  is  impossible  for  the  poor  plain 
mind  to  see.  He  will  not  have  it  as  revelation,  and  as 
anything  else  its  date  is  quite  immaterial. 

The  fact  is  that  this  severe  censor  of  "  learned 
pseudo  -  science  mixed  with  popular  legend,"  as  he 
terms  theology,  appears  to  have  no  idea  of  the  value 
of  evidence  whatever.  The  traditional  history  of  the 
Bible  is  not  even  to  be  considered  ;  but  a  conjectural 
reconstruction  of  it  by  a  Dutch  critic,  without  in  the 
older  cases  one  jot  or  tittle  of  evidence  outside  the 
covers  of  the  Bible  itself,  deserves  every  respect,  if  not 
reverent  acceptance  en  bloc.     Miracles  are  fictions,  and 


142  MATTHEW  ARNOLD. 

the  scenes  in  the  garden  of  Eden  and  at  the  Sepulchre 
never  happened ;  but  as,  bhu,  and  sta  are  very  solemn 
facts,  and  you  can  find  out  all  about  the  Divinity, 
because  the  word  Deus  means  (not  "  has  been  guessed 
to  mean,"  but  77ieans)  "  Shining."  That  Shakespeare 
knew  everything  is  much  more  certain  than  that 
miracles  do  not  happen ;  and  he  certainly  knew  Mr 
Arnold's  case  if  not  Mr  Arnold,  when  he  introduced 
a  certain  main  episode  in  A  Midsummer  Nighfs 
Drea?n.  To  frown  on  Oberon  and  caress  Bottom 
is  venial  compared  with  the  dismissal  of  the  Bible  as 
popular  legend,  and  the  implicit  belief  in  as,  bhu^ 
and  sta. 

A  wilfully  hostile  historian  of  Mr  Arnold  could  not 
dwell  too  long  on  these  unfortunate  books,  for  the 
handles  they  present  are  infinite ;  but  for  my  part  I 
shall  take  leave  to  say  little  more  about  them.  To 
ask,  in  the  common  phrase,  whether  they  did  any  harm 
would  be  to  beg  the  question  in  their  own  manner; 
to  ask  whether  they  produced  any  effect  would  lead 
us  too  far.  They  certainly  expressed  a  prevalent  ten- 
dency. Most  fortunately  Mr  Arnold  was  allowed 
another  ten  years  and  more  wherein  to  escape  from 
the  wilderness  which  yielded  these  Dead  Sea  fruits, 
and  to  till  his  proper  garden  once  more.  Yet  we  have 
not  quite  done  with  the  other  fruits  themselves. 

The  actual  finale,  Last  Essays  on  Church  and  Re- 
ligion^  was  still  less  popular,  was  indeed  the  least 
popular    of  all    his    works,    seeing    that,    as    has    been 


IN   THE   WILDERNESS.  I43 

said  above,  it  has  never  been  reprinted.  It  is  easy 
to  understand  this,  for  it  is  perhaps  the  only  one  of 
his  books  which  can  be  definitely  called  dull.  The 
apologetic  tone  noticeable  in  God  and  the  Bible  con- 
tinues, but  the  apology  is  illustrated  and  maintained 
in  an  even  less  attractive  manner.  The  Preface  is 
perhaps  the  least  dead  part  of  the  book ;  but  its  line 
of  argument  shares,  and  perhaps  even  exaggerates,  the 
controversial  infelicity  of  this  unfortunate  series.  Mr 
Arnold  deals  in  it  at  some  length  with  the  comments 
of  two  foreign  critics,  M.  Challemel-Lacour  and  Signor 
de  Gubernatis,  on  Literature  and  Dogma^  bringing  out 
(what  surely  could  have  been  no  news  to  any  but  very 
ill-educated  Englishmen)  the  fact  of  their  surprise,  not 
at  his  taking  the  Bible  with  so  little  seriousness,  but  at 
his  taking  it  with  any  seriousness  at  all.  And  he  seems 
never  even  to  dream  of  the  obvious  retort :  "  Certainly. 
These  men  are  at  any  rate  '  thorough ' ;  they  are  not 
dilettante  dalliers  between  two  opinions.  They  have 
got  far  beyond  your  half-way  house  and  have  arrived 
at  their  destination.  We  have  no  desire  to  arrive  at 
the  destination,  and  therefore,  if  you  will  excuse  us, 
we  decline  to  visit  the  half-way  house."  It  is  less 
surprising  that  he  did  not  see  tlie  force  of  the  objec- 
tions of  another  critic,  M.  Maurice  Vernes,  to  the 
equally  illogical  and  unhistorical  plan  of  arbitrarily 
selecting  this  utterance  as  that  of  "  Jesus,"  and  an- 
other, given  by  the  same  authority,  as  not  that  of 
"  Jesus."     A  man,  who  was  sensible  of  this  paralogism, 


144  MATTHEW   ARNOLD. 

could  never  take  Mr  Arnold's  views  on  Church  and 
Religion  at  all. 

But  when  we  leave  the  Preface,  even  such  faint 
liveliness  as  this  deserts  us.  The  text  contains  four 
(or  five,  the  second  being  divided  into  two  parts) 
essays,  lectures,  or  papers,  A  Psychological  Parallel, 
Bishop  B idler  and  the  Zeit-Geist,  The  Church  of  E?tg- 
land,  and  A  Last  Word  o?t  the  Burials  Bill.  All  had 
appeared  in  Mac?)iillanl s  Magazine  or  the  Contemporary 
Review  during  1876,  while  Bishop  Butler  had  been 
delivered  as  two  lectures  at  Edinburgh,  and  The 
Church  of  Englaftd  as  an  address  to  the  London 
Clergy  at  Sion  College,  during  the  spring  of  that  year. 

Over  all  there  is  a  curious  constraint,  the  evidence 
of  a  mood  not  very  difficult  to  analyse,  and  in  the 
analysis  of  which  lies  almost  all  the  satisfaction  or 
edification  to  be  got  out  of  the  book.  The  writer, 
though  by  no  means  abandoning  his  own  point  of 
view,  and  even  flattering  himself  that  some  modus 
vivendi  is  about  to  be  established  between  himself 
and  the  more  moderate  supporters  of  the  Church  and 
of  religion,  betrays  not  merely  the  well-known  self-ex- 
cusing and  self-accusing  tone,  but  odd  flashes  of  dis- 
content and  weariness  —  nay,  even  a  fretfulness  such 
as  might  have  been  that  of  a  Moses  at  Rephidim 
who  could  not  bring  water  out  of  the  rock.  A 
Psychological  Parallel  is  an  attempt  to  buttress  the 
apologia  by  referring  to  Sir  Matthew  Hale's  views 
on  witchcraft,  to  Smith,  the  Cambridge  Platonist  and 


IN   THE  WILDERNESS.  I45 

Latitudinarian,  and  to  the  Book  of  Enoch  (of  which,  by 
the  way,  it  is  a  pity  that  Mr  Arnold  did  not  live  to 
see  Mr  Charles's  excellent  translation,  since  he  desid- 
erated a  good  one).  Of  course  the  argument  is  sun- 
clear.  If  Hale  was  mistaken  about  witchcraft,  St 
Paul  may  liave  been  mistaken  about  the  Resurrection. 
Expressions  attributed  to  Christ  occur  in  the  Book  of 
Enochs  therefore  they  are  not  original  and  divine,  &c., 
&c.  And  it  would  be  out  of  place  to  attempt  any  reply 
to  this  argument,  the  reply  being  in  each  case  as  sun- 
clear  as  the  argument  itself.  No  believer  in  super- 
natural religion  that  I  ever  met  considered  Sir  Matthew 
Hale  to  have  been  inspired ;  and  no  believer  in  the 
divinity  of  Christ  can  fail  to  hold  that  His  adoption  of 
words  (if  He  did  adopt  them)  makes  them  His. 

The  gist  of  the  Butler  lectures  is  considerably  less 
clear,  and,  if  only  for  that  reason,  it  cannot  be  suc- 
cinctly stated  or  answered.  In  particular,  it  requires 
rather  careful  "  collection "  in  order  to  discover  what 
our  friend  the  Zeit-Geist  has  to  do  in  this  galley.  I 
should  imagine  that,  though  an  Edinburgh  audience  is 
by  no  means  alarmed  at  philosophy,  the  majority, 
perhaps  the  enormous  majority,  of  Mr  Arnold's  hearers 
must  have  had  a  singularly  dim  idea  as  to  his  exact 
drift.  Indeed  I  cannot  say  that  after  reading  the  piece 
when  it  first  appeared,  and  again,  twenty  years  later, 
for  the  purposes  of  this  book,  I  have  any  very  distinct 
notion  of  that  drift  myself.  If  it  merely  means  that 
Butler,  being  an  eighteenth-century  person,  was  afflicted 

K 


146  MATTHEW  ARNOLD. 

with  the  eighteenth -century  Hmitations  by  the  Zeit- 
Geist,  eighty-six  pages,  and  an  imposing  German  com- 
pound at  the  head  of  every  other  one  of  them,  seem  a 
good  deal  for  telhng  us  this.  If  it  is  a  sort  of  indirect 
attack  upon — an  obhque  demurrer  to — Butler's  con- 
structive -  aggressive  orthodoxy  in  psychology  and  re- 
ligion, one  is  bound  to  say  with  all  politeness,  first, 
that  it  is  a  case  of  impar  congressus,  and  secondly,  that 
the  adtenturous  knight  does  not  give  himself  a  fair 
chance.  It  will  take  more  than  eighty-six  not  very 
large  pages,  and  a  German  word  at  the  top  of  the 
alternate  ones,  to  do  that !  In  the  opening  sketch  of 
Butler  himself  Mr  Arnold  could  not  but  be  agreeable 
and  even  delightful.  It  gives  us,  indeed,  most  pleasant 
promise  of  work  in  this  same  good  kind  soon  to  follow ; 
but  for  the  rest  we  grope  till  we  find,  after  some  seventy- 
three  of  the  eighty-six,  that  what  Mr  Arnold  wanted  to 
say  is  that  Butler  did  not  handle,  and  could  not  then 
have  handled,  miracles  and  the  fulfilment  of  prophecy 
satisfactorily.  Butler,  like  St  Paul,  is  undoubtedly 
inconvenient  for  those  who  believe  that  miracles  do 
not  happen,  and  that  prophecies  were  either  not  made 
or  not  fulfilled.  So  he  must  be  got  rid  of.  But  whether 
he  is  got  rid  of, — whether  Mr  Arnold  and  the  Zeit-Geist 
have  put  him  on  the  shelf  as  a  venerable  but  antiquated 
object, — that  is  another  question. 

The  two  remaining  essays  show  us  Mr  Arnold,  in  his 
character  of  at  least  would-be  practical  statesman,  deal- 
ing no  longer  with  points  of  doctrine  Dut  with  the  affairs 


IN   THE   WILDERNESS.  I47 

of  the  Church  as  a  poh'tical  body.  The  circumstances 
of  the  first — the  address  deHvered  at  Sion  College — had 
a  certain  piquancy  :  whether  they  had  also  sweet  reason- 
ableness and  an  entire  accordance  with  the  fitness  of 
things  is  a  question  no  doubt  capable  of  being  debated. 
Me  the  situation  strikes,  I  must  confess,  as  a  little 
grotesque.  The  layman  in  the  wide  sense,  the  amateur, 
always  occupies  a  rather  equivocal  position  when  he 
addresses  experts  and  the  profession  ;  but  his  position 
is  never  so  equivocal  as  when  he  doubles  the  part  of 
non-expert  with  that  of  candid  friend.  How  Mr  Arnold 
succeeded  in  this  exceedingly  delicate  attempt  I  do  not 
propose  to  examine  at  any  length.  He  thought  himself 
that  he  had  "  sufficiently  marked  the  way  in  which  the 
new  world  was  to  be  reached."  Paths  to  new  worlds 
are  always  interesting,  but  in  reading,  or  rather  re-read- 
ing, the  sailing  directions  of  this  Columbus  twenty  years 
after  date,  one  may  be  a  little  disappointed.  The  sum 
appears  to  be  a  somewhat  Tootsian  declaration  that 
things  of  general  are  of  no  consequence.  The  Church 
is  better  than  Dissent ;  at  least  she  would  be  so  if  she 
dropped  all  her  dogma,  the  greater  part  of  her  super- 
stitions about  the  rights  of  property  and  "my  duty  to 
my  neighbour,"  and  as  much  as  possible  of  the  barriers 
which  separate  her  from  Dissent  itself  A  most  moderate 
eirenicon.  Still  less  need  be  said  of  the  Burials  Bill 
paper,  which  is  a  sort  of  appendix  or  corollary  to 
the  Sion  speech,  at  the  end  of  which  the  subject  had 
been    referred    to.       The    particular    question,    in    this 


148  MATTHEW  ARNOLD. 

phase  of  it,  has  long  ceased  to  burn,  and  one  need 
not  disturb  the  ashes. 

We  must  now  turn  to  the  incursions  of  this  time  into 
politics,  which,  if  not  much  happier,  were  more  amusing. 
The  chief  monument  of  them  is  the  long  unreprinted 
Friendship's  Garland,  which  has  always  had  some  ferv- 
ent devotees,  and  is  very  characteristic.  It  so  hap- 
pened that  the  period  when  Essays  in  Criticism^  com- 
bined with  his  Oxford  Lectures,  introduced  Mr  Arnold 
to  the  public,  was  the  period  of  the  first  years  of  the 
Pall  Mall  Gazette^  when  that  brilliant  periodical,  with 
the  help  of  many  of  the  original  staff  of  the  Saturday 
Review^  and  others,  was  renewing  for  the  sixties  the 
sensation  of  a  new  kind  of  journahsm,  which  the 
Saturday  itself  had  given  to  the  fifties,  while  its  form 
and  daily  appearance  gave  it  even  greater  opportunities. 
As  early  as  the  summer  of  1866,  during  the  agitation 
into  which  the  public  mind  had  been  thrown  by  the 
astounding  rapidity  and  thoroughness  of  the  Prussian 
successes  in  the  Seven  Weeks'  War,  Mr  Arnold  had 
begun  a  series  of  letters,  couched  in  the  style  of 
persiflage^  which  Kinglake  had  introduced,  or  reintro- 
duced, twenty  years  earlier  in  Eothen^  and  which  the 
Saturday  had  taken  up  and  widely  developed.  He  also 
took  not  a  few  hints  from  Carlyle  in  Sartor  and  the 
Latterday  Pamphlets.  And  for  some  years  at  intervals, 
with  the  help  of  a  troupe  of  imaginary  correspondents 
and  co77iparses  —  Arminius  von  Thundertentronckh, 
Adolescens   Leo   of  the  Daily   Telegraphy   the    Bottles 


IN  THE  wildp:rness.  149 

family  of  wealthy  Dissenters,  with  cravings  for  their 
deceased  wife's  sisters,  as  well  as  a  large  number  of 
more  or  less  celebrated  personages  of  the  day,  intro- 
duced in  their  proper  persons,  and  by  their  proper 
names  —  he  instructed  England  on  its  own  weakness, 
folly,  and  vulgarity,  on  the  wisdom  and  strength  of  the 
Germans,  on  the  importance  of  Geist  and  ideas,  &c.,  &c. 
The  author  brought  himself  in  by  name  as  a  simple 
inhabitant  of  Grub  Street,  victimised,  bullied,  or  com- 
passionately looked  down  upon  by  everybody ;  and  by 
this  well-known  device  took  licence  for  pretty  familiar 
treatment  of  other  people.  When  the  greater  crash  of 
1870  came,  and  the  intelligent  British  mind  was  more 
puzzled,  yet  more  Frusso-mimtc,  than  ever,  he  supple- 
mented these  letters,  framed  or  bound  them  up,  as  it 
were,  with  a  moving  account  of  the  death  of  Arminius 
before  Paris,  and  launched  the  whole  as  a  book. 

The  letters  had  been  much  laughed  over ;  but  I  do 
not  think  the  book  was  very  widely  bought — at  any 
rate,  its  very  high  price  during  the  time  in  which  it 
was  out  of  print  shows  that  no  large  number  was 
printed.  Perhaps  this  cold  welcome  was  not  altogether 
so  discreditable  to  the  British  public  as  it  would  have 
been,  had  its  sole  cause  been  the  undoubted  but  un- 
palatable truths  told  by  the  writer.  Either,  as  some 
say,  because  of  its  thick-hidedness,  or,  as  others,  be- 
cause of  its  arrogant  self-sufficiency,  the  British  public 
has  never  resented  these  much.  But,  in  the  first  place, 
the  thing  was  a  falsetto.     Mr  Arnold  had  plenty  of  wit 


ICO  MATTHEW  ARNOLD. 


J 


but  not  much  humour ;  and  after  a  time  one  feels  that 
Bottles  and  Leo  &  Co.  may  be,  as  Dousterswivel 
says,  "  very  witty  and  comedy,"  but  that  we  should 
not  be  altogether  sorry  if  they  would  go.  Further, 
the  direct  personalities — the  worst  instances  concerned 
Lord  Elcho,  Mr  Frederic  Harrison,  and  the  late  Mr 
Sala — struck,  and  strike,  some  people  as  being  not 
precisely  in  good  taste.  The  constant  allusions  and 
references  to  minor  and  ephemeral  things  and  persons 
were  not  of  course  then  unintelligible,  but  they  were 
even  then  teasing.  In  all  these  points,  if  F7'iendshif  s 
Garland  be  compared,  I  will  once  more  not  say  with 
A  Tale  of  a  Tub,  but  even  with  the  History  of  John 
Bull,  its  weakness  will  come  out  rather  strongly. 

But  this  was  not  all  It  was  quite  evident — and  it 
was  no  shame  and  no  disadvantage  to  him — that  the 
jester  was  endeavouring  to  urge  a  very  serious  earnest 
behind,  and  by  means  of,  his  jest ;  that  he  was  no 
mere  railer,  or  caviller,  or  even  satirist,  but  a  convinced 
reformer  and  apostle.  Yet  when  we  try  to  get  at 
his  programme — at  his  gospel — there  is  no  vestige  of 
anything  tangible  about  either.  Not  very  many  impar- 
tial persons  could  possibly  accept  Mr  Arnold's  favour- 
ite doctrine,  that  the  salvation  of  the  people  lies  in 
state-provided  middle-class  schools ;  and  this  was  speci- 
ally difficult  in  187 1,  if  they  remembered  how  some 
few  years  before  Mr  Arnold  had  been  extolling  the 
state  provided  middle -class  schools  of  France.  While, 
for   the    rest,   a  man    might  be   (as   many  men  were) 


IN    THE  WILDERNESS.  1$! 

thoroughly  dissatisfied  with  the  part  England  had 
played  abroad  in  Italy,  in  the  American  Civil  War, 
in  Denmark,  in  the  war  of  1866,  in  the  war  of  1870, 
and  at  home  from  1845  onwards,  and  yet  not  be  able 
for  the  life  of  him  to  discover  any  way  of  safety  in 
Friendship's   Gar/and. 

Nor,  to  take  with  the  Garland  for  convenience  sake 
Irish  Essays  1882,  the  political  book  which  closed  this 
period  with  the  political  book  that  opened  it,  do  we 
find  things  much  better,  even  long  after  "the  Wilder- 
ness "  had  been  mostly  left  behind  There  Is  indeed 
less  falsetto  and  less  flippancy ;  perhaps  Mr  Arnold 
had  silently  learnt  a  lesson,  perhaps  the  opportunities 
of  regular  essays  m  "three-decker"  reviews — of  a  lay 
sermon  to  working  men,  of  a  speech  at  the  greatest 
public  school  in  the  world — discouraged  the  playfulness 
which  had  seemed  permissible  in  addressing  a  skittish 
young  evening  newspaper.  But  the  unpracticalness — 
not  in  the  Philistine  but  in  the  strictly  scientific 
sense  —  is  more  glaring  than  ever,  and  there  are 
other  faults  with  it.  Great  part  of  An  Unregarded 
Irish  Grievance  is  occupied  by  a  long-drawn-out  com- 
parison of  England's  behaviour  to  Ireland  with  that 
of  Mr  Murdstone  and  his  friend  and  manager  Qumion 
to  David  Copperfield  In  the  first  place,  one  thinks 
wickedly  of  the  gibe  in  Friendship's  Garland  about 
**  Mr  Vernon  Harcourt  developing  a  system  of  un- 
sectarian  religion  from  the  life  of  Mr  Pickwick."  In 
the  second,  one  asks  on  what  principles  of  literary  art 


152  MATTHEW  ARNOLD. 

a  comparison,  not  wholly  improper  as  a  mere  illustra- 
tion in  passing,  can  be  worked  to  death  and  turned  in- 
side out  and  upside  down,  for  some  twenty  mortal  pages. 
And  so  in  other  places.  Yet  the  worst  faults  are 
not  in  form  but  in  substance.  Minor  contradictions  do 
not  matter,  though  in  a  copy  of  the  book  I  have  read 
there  is  a  damaging  comparison  by  some  annotator 
between  Mr  Arnold's  description  of  Enghsh  Govern- 
ment at  p.  4  and  his  rosy  picture  of  education  under 
Government  at  p.  107.  This  might  happen  to  any- 
body, and  is  not  fatal.  What  is  fatal  is  that  this 
censor  of  the  "  unideaed "  has  evidently  himself  no 
"  ideas,"  no  first  principles,  in  politics  at  all.  That, 
play  what  tricks  you  will,  all  possible  politics  come 
round  either  to  the  Rule  of  the  One,  the  Rule  of 
the  Few,  or  the  Rule  of  the  Many,  and  that  the  con- 
sequences of  these  rules,  differentiated  a  little  but  not 
materially  by  historical  and  racial  characteristics,  are 
as  constant  as  anything  commonly  called  scientific, — 
this  never  seems  to  have  occurred  to  Mr  Arnold  at  all. 
He  did  not  fully  appreciate  Thackeray,  and  Thackeray 
died  too  soon  to  know  very  much  of  him.  But  I  have 
always  thought  that,  for  a  criticism  of  life  possessing 
prophetic  genius,  the  Chevalier  Strong's  wedding  con- 
gratulations to  Arthur  Pendennis  are  almost  uncanny 
as  regards  the  Matthaean  gospel.  "  Nothing,"  said  the 
Chevalier,  when  he  had  established  himself  as  agent  to 
the  Duke  of  Garbanzos,  "is  so  important  to  the  welfare 
of  the  household  as  Good  SherryT    And  so  we  find  that 


IN    THE   WILDERNESS.  1 53 

the  Irish  question,  like  all  others,  will  be  solved  by  the 
substitution  of  State-governed  for  private  middle-class 
schools,  by  the  saturation  of  England  with  "  ideas," 
by  all  our  old  friends. 

The  rest  matches.  Mr  Arnold  pooh  -  poohs  the 
notion  that  Ireland,  except  by  force,  will  never  be 
blended  wuth  England ;  it  would  be  as  sensible  to 
say  this  "of  Scotland,  Wales,  or  Cornwall."  He  was 
not,  I  think,  dead  —  he  was  certainly  not  dead  long 
— when  Wales  actually  did  follow,  less  formidably,  of 
course,  in  the  path  of  Ireland,  beginning  with  the 
Church,  going  on  to  the  Land,  and  not  distantly 
threatening  the  State.  As  usual  he  goes  to  his  books. 
He  quotes  Goethe — a  great  man  of  letters,  but  perhaps 
the  most  pedantic  of  great  men  of  letters  except  Milton 
— to  prove  that  "  the  English  are  pedants."  He  quotes 
Burke — the  unregenerate  Irish  Whig  Burke,  not  the 
prophet  whose  tongue  the  French  Revolution  had 
touched  as  it  opened  his  eyes — to  tell  us  what  to  do 
with  Ireland.  But  the  main  point  in  at  least  one  of 
these  essays,  The  Incompatibles^  is  again  connected  with 
David  Copperfield.  I  have  said  that,  from  the  merely 
literary  point  of  view,  the  perpetual  ringing  of  the 
changes  on  Creakle,  Murdstone,  Quinion  —  Quinion, 
Murdstone,  Creakle — is  inartistic  and  irritating.  But 
from  the  philosophical  and  political  point  of  view  it 
is  far  worse.  No  Englishman  with  any  sense  of  fact 
ever  has  taken,  or  could  take,  Dickens's  characters  as 
normal  types.     They  are  always  fantastic  exaggerations. 


154  MATTHEW  ARNOLD. 

full  of  genius  occasionally,  but  as  unlike  actual  reality 
as  those  illustrations  by  Cruikshank  which  are  their 
nearest  companions  in  the  art  of  line.  Of  the  three 
figures  selected  in  particular,  Creakle  is  a  caricature ; 
Murdstone,  though  not  exactly  that,  is  a  repulsive  ex- 
ception ;  and  Quinion  is  so  mere  a  co7?iparse  or 
"super"  that  to  base  any  generalisation  on  him  is 
absurd.  The  dislike  of  the  British  public  to  be  "  talked 
book  to  "  may  be  healthy  or  unhealthy ;  but  if  it  takes 
no  great  heed  of  this  kind  of  talking  book,  small  blame 
to  it !  The  same  hopeless,  not  to  say  the  same  wil- 
ful, neglect  of  the  practical  appears  throughout.  Mr 
Arnold  (to  his  credit  be  it  said)  had  no  great  hopes  of 
the  Land  Bill  of  1881.  But  his  own  panaceas — a  sort 
of  Cadi-court  for  "  bag-and-baggaging "  bad  landlords, 
and  the  concurrent  endowment  of  Catholicism — were,  at 
least,  no  better,  and  went,  if  it  were  possible,  even 
more  in  the  teeth  of  history. 

It  may  be  worth  while  (taking  the  usual  chronological 
licence  for  the  sake  of  logical  coherence)  to  say  a  few 
words  on  the  other  political  and  quasi-political  pieces 
reprinted  with  Irish  Essays — the  address  to  Ipswich 
working  men,  Ecce  Cojivertimur  ad  Gejites,  the  Eton 
speech  on  Eutrapelia^  and  the  ambitious  Future  of 
Liberaiis??i}     The  first   is   a   curious  but  not  very  im- 

^  Of  the  remaining  contents,  the  Prefaces  of  1853-5  ^^^  invalu- 
able, at  least  the  first  is,  but  this  has  been  already  noticed.  Of 
The  French  Flay  in  London^  I  am,  perhaps,  no  good  judge,  as  I 
take  little  interest  in  the  acted  drama.  It  is  much  occupied  with 
the  inferiority  of  French  poetry,  and  especially  of  the  poetry  of 


IN   THE   WILDERNESS.  I  55 

portant  appeal  to  the  lower  class  to  educate  the 
middle,  with  episodic  praises  of  "  equality,"  "  acade- 
mies," and  the  like,  as  well  as  glances  at  a  more 
extensive  system  of  "  municipalisation,"  which,  not  to 
the  satisfaction  of  everybody,  has  come  about  since. 
The  second  contains  some  admirable  remarks  on 
classical  education,  some  still  more  admirable  protests 
against  reading  about  the  classics  instead  of  reading 
the  classics,  and  the  famous  discourse  on  Eutrapelia^ 
with  its  doctrine  that  "  conduct  is  three-fourths  of  life," 
its  denunciation  of  "  moral  inadequacy,"  and  its  really 
great  indications  of  societies  dying  of  the  triumph  of 
Liberalism  and  Conservatism  respectively.  A  discourse 
quite  admirable  in  intention,  though  if  "  heckling  "  had 
been  in  order  on  that  occasion,  a  sharp  youth  might 
have  put  Mr  Arnold  in  some  difficulty  by  asking  where 
the  canons  of  "  moral  adequacy  "  are  written. 

But  The  Future  of  Liberalism^  which  the  Elizabethans 
would  have  called  a  "  cooling-card  "  after  the  Liberal 
triumph  of  1880,  exhibits  its  author's  political  quiddity 
most  clearly.  Much  that  he  says  is  perfectly  true  \ 
much  of  it,  whether  true  or  not,  is,  as  Sam  Weller 
observes,  "  wery  pretty."  But  the  old  mistake  recurs 
of  playing  on  a  phrase  ad  nauseam  —  in  this  case  a 
phrase  of  Cobbett's  (one  of  the  greatest  of  phrase- 
makers,  but  also  one  of  the  chief  of  the  apostles  of 

Hugo  ;  the  inferiority  of  English  civilisation,  especially  of  the 
middle  class.  There  are  good  things  in  it,  but  they  are  better 
said  elsewhere.     The  rest  needs  no  notice. 


156  MATTHEW  ARNOLD. 

unreason)  about  "  the  principles  of  Pratt,  the  principles 
of  Yorke."  It  was,  of  course,  a  capital  argumentum 
ad  invidiam^  and  Mr  Arnold  frankly  adopted  it.  He 
compared  himself  to  Cobbett — a  compliment,  no  doubt ; 
but  one  which,  I  fear,  Cobbett,  who  hated  nothing  so 
much  as  a  university  man,  would  not  have  appreciated. 
Cobbett  thought  of  nothing  but  the  agricultural  labourer's 
"full  belly" — at  least  this  is  how  he  himself  put  it; 
and  it  would  have  enforced  Mr  Arnold's  argument  and 
antithesis  had  he  known  or  dared  to  use  it.  Mr  Arnold 
thought  of  nothing  but  the  middle  classes'  empty  mind. 
The  two  parties,  as  represented  by  the  rather  small  Lord 
Camden  and  the  rather  great  Lord  Hardwicke,  cared  for 
neither  of  these  things — so  "the  principles  of  Pratt,  the 
principles  of  Yorke "  comes  in  as  a  refrain.  To  the 
average  Briton  quotation  is  no  more  argument  than, 
on  higher  authority,  is  blank  verse.  Still  it  might 
do  for  ornament,  if  not  for  argument, — might  help  the 
lesson  and  point  it  at  least.  So  we  turn  to  the  lesson 
itself.  This  "  Liberal  of  the  future,"  as  Mr  Arnold 
styles  himself,  begins,  with  orthodoxy  if  not  with 
philosophy,  by  warning  the  Tories  off  entirely.  "They 
cannot  really  profit  the  nation,  or  give  it  what  it  needs." 
Perhaps ,  but  suppose  we  ask  for  a  little  reason,  just  a 
ghost  of  a  premiss  or  two  for  this  extensive  conclusion  ? 
There  is  no  voice,  neither  any  that  answers.  And 
then,  the  Tories  dismissed  with  a  wave  to  all  but 
temporary  oblivion  (they  are  to  be  allowed,  it  seems, 
to  appear  from  time  to  time  to  chasten  Liberalism),  our 


IN   THE  WILDERNESS.  1 57 

prophet  turns  to  Liberalism  itself.  It  ought  to  promote 
"the  humanisation  of  man  in  society,"  and  it  doesn't 
promote  this.  Ah  !  what  a  blessed  word  is  "humanisa- 
tion," the  very  equivalent,  in  syllables  as  in  blessedness, 
of  "  Mesopotamia  "  !  But  when  for  the  considerable  rest 
of  the  essay  we  try  to  find  out  what  humanisation  is^ 
why  we  find  nothing  but  the  old  negative  impalpable 
gospel,  that  we  must  "  ^/^materialise  our  upper  class, 
^/Vvulgarise  our  middle  class,  ^/Vbrutalise  our  lower 
class."  "Om-m-ject  and  sum-m-m-ject !  "  "om-m-ject 
and  sum-m-m-ject,"  in  short,  as  that  famous  flash  of 
Thomas  Carlyle's  genius  discovered  and  summarised 
Coleridge,  and  with  Coleridge  the  whole  nineteenth 
century.  A  screed  of  jargon — a  patter  of  shibboleth — 
and  that  is  all.  Never  a  thought  for  this  momentous 
question — "  May  you  not  possibly — indeed  most  prob- 
ably— in  attempting  to  remove  what  you  choose  to 
consider  as  the  defects  of  these  classes,  remove  also 
what  you  acknov/ledge  to  be  their  virtues — the  govern- 
ing faculty  of  the  upper  class,  the  conduct  and  moral 
health  of  the  middle,  the  force  and  vigour  of  the 
lower?"  A  momentous  question  indeed,  and  one 
which,  as  some  think,  has  got  something  of  an  answer 
since,  and  no  comfortable  one ! 

I  must  apologise,  and  I  do,  for  anything  that  may 
appear  too  polemical  in  this  chapter.  But  the  cir- 
cumstances of  the  case  made  it  almost  as  impossible, 
as  it  would  have  been  uninteresting,  to  be  merely 
recitative  and   colourless ;    and    Mr   Arnold's   own   ex- 


158  MATTHEW  ARNOLD. 

ample  gives  ample  licence.  In  particular,  any  one 
who  has  had  actual  and  close  knowledge  of  the  actual 
progress  of  politics  for  many  years  may  be  pardoned 
for  speaking  with  some  decision  on  the  practice  of 
sitting  at  ease  in  Zion,  and  raying  out  curious  obser- 
vations on  Barbarians  and  Eutrapelia  and  the  charac- 
ter of  Mr  Quinion.  We  may  have  too  little  of  such 
things  in  English  politics — no  doubt  for  a  good  many 
years  before  Mr  Arnold's  day  we  had  too  little  of 
them.  But  too  much,  though  a  not  unpopular,  is  a 
very  clumsy  and  very  unscientific  antidote  to  too 
little ;  and  in  Mr  Arnold's  own  handling  of  politics, 
I  venture  to  think  that  there  was  too  much  of  them 
by  a  very  great  deal 

It  is  very  pleasant  to  turn  from  the  literary  results 
of  this  period,  from  the  spectacle  of  Pegasus 

"  Stumbling  in  miry  roads  of  alien  art," 

and  harnessing  himself  to  all  manner  of  unsuitable 
vehicles,  to  the  private  history  of  the  decade.  This, 
though  sadly  chequered  by  Mr  Arnold's  first  domestic 
troubles,  was  on  the  whole  prosperous,  was  somewhat 
less  laborious  than  the  earlier  years,  and  was  light- 
ened by  ever  more  of  the  social  and  public  distrac- 
tions, which  no  man  entirely  dislikes,  and  which — 
to  a  certain  extent  and  in  a  certain  way — Mr  Arnold 
did  not  dislike  at  all.  The  changes  of  occupation 
and  of  literary  aim  by  the  termination  of  the  pro- 
fessorship  coincided,   as   such   things   have   a   habit   of 


IN   THE  WILDERNESS.  159 

doing,  with  changes  in  place  and  circumstance.  The 
Chester  Square  house  grew  too  small  for  the  children, 
and  a  move  to  Harrow  was  first  meditated  and  then 
achieved.  A  very  pleasant  letter  to  his  mother,  in 
November  1867,  tells  how  he  was  present  at  the 
farewell  dinner  to  Dickens  on  his  departure  for 
America,  how  they  wanted  him  (vainly)  to  come  to 
the  high  table  and  speak,  and  how  Lord  Lytton 
finally  brought  him  into  his  own  speech.  He  adds 
that  some  one  has  given  him  "a  magnificent  box  of 
four  hundred  Manilla  cheroots "  (he  must  surely  have 
counted  wrongs  for  they  usually  make  these  things 
in  two-hundred-and-fifties  or  five-hundreds),  welcome 
to  hand  on,  though  he  did  not  smoke  himself.  In 
another  he  expresses  the  evangelical  desire  to  "  do 
Mr  Swinburne  some  good." 

But  in  January  1868  his  baby -child  Basil  died; 
and  the  intense  family  affection,  which  was  one  of  his 
strongest  characteristics,  suffered  of  course  cruelly,  as 
is  recorded  in  a  series  of  touching  letters  to  his  sister 
and  mother.  He  fell  and  hurt  himself  at  Cannon 
Street,  too,  but  was  comforted  by  his  sister  with  a 
leading  case  about  an  illiterate  man  who  fell  into  a 
reservoir  through  not  reading  a  notice.  The  Harrow 
house  became  a  reality  at  Lady  Day,  and  at  Mid- 
summer he  went  to  stay  at  Panshanger,  and  "  heard 
the  word  'Philistine'  used  a  hundred  times  during 
dinner  and  '  Barbarian '  nearly  as  often "  (it  must  be 
remembered  that  the  "Culture  and  Anarchy"  articles 


l6o  MATTHEW   ARNOLD. 

were  coming  out  now).  This  half-childish  delight  in 
such  matters  (like  Mr  Pendennis's  "  It's  all  in  the 
papers,  and  my  name  too  ! ")  is  one  of  the  most  fas- 
cinating things  about  him,  and  one  of  not  a  few, 
proving  that,  if  there  was  some  affectation,  there  was 
no  dissimulation  in  his  nature.  Too  many  men,  I 
fear,  would  have  said  nothing  about  them,  or  assumed 
a  lofty  disdain.  In  September  he  mentions  to  Mr 
Grant  Duff  a  plan  (which  one  only  wishes  he  had 
carried  out,  letting  all  the  "Dogma"  series  go  Kar^ 
ovpov  as  it  deserved)  for  "a  sketch  of  Greek  poetry, 
illustrated  by  extracts  in  harmonious  prose."  This 
would  have  been  one  of  the  few  great  literary  his- 
tories of  the  world,  and  so  Apollo  kept  it  in  his 
own  lap.  The  winter  repeated,  far  more  heavily,  the 
domestic  blow  of  the  spring,  and  Tom,  his  eldest 
son,  who  had  always  been  delicate,  died,  aged  six- 
teen only,  at  Harrow,  where  since  the  removal  he 
had  been  at  school.  There  is  something  about  this 
in  the  Letters;  but  on  the  great  principle  of  ciirce 
leveSy  less,  as  we  should  expect,  than  about  the  baby's 
death. 

In  February  next  year  Mr  Arnold's  double  repute, 
as  a  practical  and  official  "educationist"  and  as  a 
man  of  letters,  brought  him  the  offer  of  the  care  of 
Prince  Thomas  of  Savoy,  son  of  the  Duke  of  Genoa, 
and  grandson  of  Victor  Emmanuel,  who  was  to  at- 
tend Harrow  School  and  board  with  the  Arnolds. 
The  charge,   though   honourable  and,   I   suppose,  prof- 


IN  THE  WILDERNESS.  l6l 

itable,  might  not  have  been  entirely  to  the  taste  of 
everybody ;  but  it  seemed  to  Mr  Arnold  a  new  link 
with  the  Continent,  and  he  welcomed  it.  The  same 
year  saw  a  visit  to  Knebworth,  and  a  very  interesting 
and  by  no  means  unsound  criticism  on  that  important 
event  in  the  life  of  a  poet,  the  issue  of  the  first  col- 
lected edition  of  his  poems.-^  This  was  in  two  volumes, 
and  is  now  rather  precious.  "  It  might  be  fairly 
urged  that  I  have  less  poetic  sentiment  than  Tenny- 
son, and  less  intellectual  vigour  and  abundance  than 
Browning ;  yet  because  I  have  perhaps  more  of  a 
fusion  of  the  two  than  either  of  them,  and  have 
more  regularly  applied  that  fusion  to  the  main  line 
of  modern   development,   I  am   likely  enough  to  have 

'  A  note  on  the  contents  of  this  and  the  subsequent  collected  edi- 
tions may  not  be  unwelcome  ;  for,  as  was  always  the  case  with  him, 
he  varied  them  not  a  little.  This  first  collection  was  advertised 
as  comprehending  "the  First  and  Second  Series  of  the  Author's 
Poems  and  the  New  Poems,"  but  as  a  matter  of  fact  half-a-dozen 
pieces — including  things  as  interesting  as  A  Drea?n  and  Stagirius — 
are  omitted,  though  the  fine  hi  Utrumque  Paratus  reappears  for  the 
first  time  as  a  consolation.  As  reprinted  in  1877,  this  collection 
dropped  The  Church  of  Brou  except  the  third  part,  and  recovered 
not  only  Stagirius  and  others  but  The  New  Sirens,  besides  giving, 
for  the  first  time  in  book-form,  Haworth  Churchyard,  printed  twenty- 
two  years  before  in  Fraser.  A  further  reprint  in  18S1  restored  the 
whole  Church  of  Brou  and  A  Dream,  and  gave  two  or  three  small 
additions,  especially  Geisfs  Grave.  The  three-\o\\xxii&  edition  of 
1885  also  republished  Merope  for  the  first  time,  and  added  West- 
minster Abbey  and  Poor  Alatthias.  The  one-\o\\xn\e  edition  of  1S90 
reproduced  all  this,  adding  Horatian  Echo  and  Kaiser  Dead ;  it 
is  complete  save  for  the  two  prize  poems,  and  six  or  seven  smaller 
pieces. 

L 


i62  Matthew  Arnold. 

my  turn."  One  can  only  query  whether  poetry  has 
anything  to  do  with  "  modern  development,"  and 
desiderate  the  addition  to  "  sentiment "  of  "  art." 
He  seems  to  imply  that  Mr  Gladstone  personally 
prevented  his  appointment  to  a  commissionership 
under  the  Endowed  Schools  Act.  But  the  year 
ended  with  a  complimentary  reference  from  Mr  Dis- 
raeli at  Latimers  about  "Sweetness  and  Light" 

In  February  1870  the  famous  Persian  cat  Atossa 
(now  in  the  most  comfortable  lap  of  all  the  gods  or 
goddesses,  with  Hodge  and  Bona  Marietta  and  Hinse 
of  Hinsfeldt)  makes  her  first  appearance ;  and  in  June 
Mr  Arnold  received  the  Oxford  D.C.L.  He  set  it 
down  to  "a  young  and  original  sort  of  man,  Lord 
Salisbury,  being  Chancellor " ;  and  Lord  Salisbury  him- 
self afterwards  told  him  that  "no  doubt  he  ought  to 
have  addressed  him  as  '  vir  dulcissime  et  lucidissime.' " 
But  though  he  was  much  pleased  by  his  reception,  he 
thought  Lord  Salisbury  "  dangerous,"  as  being  unlit- 
erary,  and  only  scientific  and  religious  in  his  tastes. 

In  December  he  had  an  amusing  and  (as  it  ended 
well)  not  unsatisfactory  experience  of  the  ways  of  In- 
come Tax  Commissioners.  These  gentlemen  acted  on 
even  vaguer  principles  than  those  on  which  they  once 
assessed  a  poor  dramatic  amateur,  who  had  by  accident 
received  ^6  "  author's  rights "  for  a  week,  at  ;i£^3oo 
per  annum,  on  the  sound  arithmetical  argument  that 
there  are  fifty  (indeed,  there  are  fifty-two)  weeks  in  a 
year,  and  that  fifty  times  six  is  three  hundred.     They 


IN   THE   WILDERNESS.  1 63 

put  Mr  Arnold's  literary  profits  at  ^1000,  and  he 
had  to  expostulate  in  person  before  they  would  let 
him  down  to  ;£"2oo,  though  he  pathetically  explained 
that  "  he  should  have  to  write  more  articles  than  he 
ever  had  done ''  to  prevent  his  being  a  loser  even  at 
that.  About  the  catastrophe  of  the  Anne'e  Terrible,  his 
craze  for  "  righteousness »  makes  him  a  very  little 
Pecksniffian — one  thinks  of  the  Tower  of  Siloam.  But 
it  is  pleasant  to  hear  that,  early  in  187 1,  they  are  arrang- 
ing for  him  "  a  perfect  district,  Westminster  and  a 
small  rural  part  near  Harrow."  So  one  hopes  that  the 
days  of  posting  from  shire  to  shire  and  subsisting  on 
buns  were  over.  He  is  interested  about  Deutsch  (the 
comet  of  a  season  for  his  famous  Talmud  articles), 
receives  the  Commandership  of  the  Crown  of  Italy  for 
his  services  to  Prince  Thomas,  and  is  proposed  for 
the  Middlesex  magistracy,  but  (to  one's  sorrow)  de- 
clines. There  is  fishing  at  Chenies  {vide  an  admirable 
essay  of  Mr  Froude's)  in  the  early  summer,  a  visit  to 
Switzerland  in  the  later,  and  in  September  "the  pigs 
are  grown  very  large  and  handsome,  and  experts  advise 
their  conversion  into  bacon."  But  Mrs  Arnold  "  does 
not  like  the  idea."  Indeed  this  is  the  drawback  of  pig- 
keeping,  which  is  otherwise  a  most  fascinating  pastime ; 
but  you  can  escape  it,  and  unite  pleasure  with  profit,  by 
merely  breeding  the  pigs  and  selling  the  litters  young. 

After  this  respite  fate  was  again  cruel.  On  February 
16,  1872,  Mr  Arnold's  second  son  died  at  Harrow, 
and  again  the  reception  of  the  blow  and  its  effect  are 


l64  MATTHEW  ARNOLD. 

marked  by  lesser  voicefulness  in  the  grief.  Yet  one 
phrase,  "  I  cannot  write  his  name  without  stopping  to 
look  at  it  in  stupefaction  at  his  not  being  alive,"  is 
equal  to  volumes.  The  letters  of  this  year  are  few,  but 
in  September  begins  a  correspondence  of  some  interest 
and  duration  with  a  French  pastor,  M.  Fontanes.  Nor 
does  1873  give  much  except  description  of  a  tour  to 
Italy,  while  in  May  the  Arnolds  moved  from  Harrow, 
with  its  painful  memories,  to  Cobham,  which  was  Mr 
Arnold's  home  for  the  rest  of  his  life.  In  September 
he  "  shoots  worse  than  ever "  {vide  Friendshif  s  Gar- 
land) in  the  famous  preserves  of  Six  Mile  Bottom,  and 
soon  after  his  mother  dies.  But  it  is  not  given  to  all 
men  not  to  be  motherless  till  they  themselves  are  fifty. 
And  1874  is  again  rather  barren,  even  such  yield  as  it 
gives  being  rather  didactic  and  controversial,  as  for 
instance  in  a  letter  to  his  sister,  who  had  apparently 
remonstrated  with  some  vigour  against  the  tone  of 
Literature  a?id  Dogma.  A  pleasant  letter  to  Miss 
Kingsley  on  her  father's  death  (1875)  puts  in  good 
evidence  against  the  charge  of  grudging  appreciation 
of  contemporaries  which  has  often  been  brought 
against  Mr  Arnold,  and  which  some  unguarded  ex- 
pressions, rather  injudiciously  published  in  other  letters, 
may  seem  to  confirm. 

Another  in  December  contains  an  instance^  of  that  dis- 

^  *'  I  do  not  like  the  course  for  the  History  School  at  all ;  nothing 
but  read,  read,  read,  endless  histories  in  Eiiglisli,  many  of  them  by 
quite  second-rate  men  ;  nothing  to  form  the  mind  as  reading  really 


IN   THE  WILDERNESS.  165 

like  to  history,  which  long  before  its  publication  careful 
students  of  his  works  had  always  noticed  in  him.  The 
fact  is,  that  to  a  man  of  ideas,  as  Mr  Arnold  would 
have  liked  to  be  called  —  a  man  of  theories  or  of 
crotchets,  as  in  extending  order  of  unkindness  people 
actually  did  call  him  —  history  must  bs  an  annoying 
study  The  things  that  ought  to  happen  do  not 
happen,  and  the  things  that  do  happen  have  to  be  awk- 
wardly explained  away  or  hazardously  ignored.  His 
almost  pettish  disgust  for  the  historic  estimate  in  litera- 
ture itself  may  have  either  caused  or  been  caused  by 
this  more  general  dislike,  and  the  dislike  itself  explains 
the  leniency  with  which  he  always  regarded  the  sheer 
guess-work  of  the  Biblical  critics.  But  it  is  possible 
to  sympathise  with  his  disapproval  of  the  divorce  of 
History  and  Law,  which  used  to  be  united  in  the  Oxford 
schools.  Together  they  made  a  discipline,  inferior 
indeed,  but  only  inferior,  to  that  of  the  great  school 
of  Literce  Huviatiiores^  the  best  intellectual  training  in 
the  world.  When  they  are  divided,  it  may  be  feared 
that  law  becomes  a  mere  technicality,  if  not  a  mere 
bread-study,  and  that  history  is  at  once  thin  and  vague. 
But  Clio  must  have  made  interest  with  Nemesis  5  for, 
but  a  page  or  two  afterwards,  this  disregard  of  history 
leads  Mr  Arnold  into  a  very  odd  blunder.  His  French 
friend,    M.    Fontanes,    had    thought    of    writing    about 

great  authors  forms  it,  or  even  to  exercise  it  as  learning  a  new 
language,  or  mathematics,  or  one  of  the  natural  sciences  exer- 
cises it." 


1 66  MATTHEW  ARNOLD. 

Godwin,  but  Mr  Arnold  dissuades  him.  "Godwin," 
he  says,  "  est  interessant,  mais  il  n'est  pas  une  source ; 
des  courants  actuels  qui  nous  portent,  aucun  ne  vient 
de  lui."  Godwin  is  the  high  priest  of  Anarchism ;  he 
is  our  first  Sociahst  philosopher ;  he  advocated  no 
marriage,  woman's  rights,  the  abolition  of  religion. 
And  da7is  7ws  courants  actuels  rien  ne  vient  de  lui  /  This 
was  early  in  1876,  and  later  in  the  same  year  we  have 
from  him  the  singular  judgment  that  George  Sand,  just 
dead,  was  "  the  greatest  spirit  in  our  European  world 
from  the  time  that  Goethe  departed."  The  chronicle 
may  be  appropriately  closed  for  the  time  by  mentioning 
that  in  the  spring  of  1877  Mr  Arnold  was  approached 
with  a  view  to  his  standing  once  more  for  the  Poetry 
Chair,  and  declined.  The  invitation,  however,  was  a 
sort  of  summons  to  him  to  go  back  to  his  proper  work, 
and  in  effect,  though  doubtless  not  in  intention,  he 
had  already  obeyed  it.  "A  French  Critic  on  Milton," 
published  in  January  1877,  is  the  first  literary  article 
of  any  importance  that  his  bibliography  records  for  the 
whole  decade  which  we  have  surveyed  in  this  chapter. 

Note. — It  is  particularly  unlucky  that  the  Prose  Passages,  which 
the  author  selected  from  his  works  and  published  in  18S9,  did  not 
appear  later.  It  is  almost  suflficient  to  say  that  less  than  one-fourth 
of  their  contents  is  devoted  to  literature,  all  the  rest  to  the  "  Dead 
Sea  fruit."  I  have  therefore  said  nothinj;  about  the  book  in  the  text. 
It  is,  however,  a  useful  though  incomplete  and  one-sided  chresto- 
mathy  of  Mr  Arnold  s  style  from  the  formal  point  of  view,  illustrat- 
ing both  his  minor  devices  of  phrase  and  the  ingenious  ordonnance 
of  his  paragraphs  in  building  up  thought  nnd  view. 


i6y 


CHAPTER  V. 


THE    LAST    DECADE. 


It  would  be  unhistorical  to  assert,  and  unphilosophical 
to  assume,  that  in  the  change  or  reversion  noted  at  the 
end  of  the  last  chapter,  Mr  Arnold  had  any  conscious- 
ness of  relinquishment,  still  more  to  hint  any  definite 
sense  of  failure  on  his  part.  He  would  probably  have 
said  (if  any  one  had  been  impertinent  enough  to  ask, 
and  he  had  condescended  to  reply)  that  he  had  said 
his  say,  had  shot  his  bolt,  and  might  leave  them  to 
produce  their  effect.  But  that  there  was,  if  no  re- 
pentance, a  certain  disgust,  I  cannot  but  believe.  He 
must  have  seen  —  he  almost  acknowledges  that  he 
saw  —  that  the  work  which  he  at  least  thought  was 
conservative  was  being  utilised  by  others  in  a  purely 
destructive  spirit ;  he  must  have  found  himself  in  very 
unwelcome  alliances ;  and  (which  is  worst  of  all  to  a 
delicate  and  sensitive  spirit)  he  must  constantly  have 
found  fools  dotting  his  /'s  and  emphasising  his  innuen- 
does in  their  own  clumsy  and  Philistine  fashion.  At 
any   rate,    it   is    purely   historical    to    say    that    he   did 


l68  MATTHEW   ARNOLD. 

henceforward  almost  entirely  change  his  main  line  of 
operation  as  to  religious  matters,  and  that  though,  as 
has  been  shown,  he  persisted,  not  too  fortunately,  in 
politics,  his  method  of  discussion  in  that  likewise  was 
altered.  As  we  heard  no  more  of  the  three  Lord 
Shaftesburys,  so  Bottles  and  his  unwelcome  society 
were  permitted  to  remain  unchronicled.  In  the  latter 
department  seriousness  came  upon  Mr  Arnold ;  in  the 
former,  if  not  a  total,  yet  a  general  and  certainly  most 
welcome  silence. 

Most  welcome  :  for  he  was  voiceful  enough  on  other 
and  his  proper  subjects.  "  Falkland,"  which  followed 
"A  French  Critic  on  Milton,"  in  March  in  the  Fortnightly^ 
and  "  George  Sand,"  which  followed  it,  as  has  been  said, 
in  June  in  the  Nineteenth  Century^  somewhat  deserved 
the  title  {Mixed  Essays)  of  the  volume  in  which  they 
were  two  years  later  reprinted.  But  the  last  essay  of 
the  year  1877,  that  on  Mr  Stopford  Brooke's  Primer^ 
was,  like  the  "  French  Critic,"  and  even  more  than  that, 
pure  literature.  "A  French  Critic  on  Goethe,"  which 
appeared  in  the  Quarterly  Revieiv  for  January  1878, 
followed  next.  The  other  pieces  of  this  year,  which 
also,  with  one  exception,  appeared  in  Mixed  Essays^ 
were,  with  that  exception,  evidences  of  a  slight  but  venial 
relapse,  or  let  us  say  of  convalescence  not  yet  quite 
turned  into  health.  "  Equality  "  {Fortnightly^  March 
1878),  "Irish  Catholicism  and  British  Liberalism"  (iv;^/- 
nightly,  July  1878),  and  "  Porro  Unum  est  Necessarium  " 
{Fortnightly,    November    1878),    were,    if   not   of  "the 


THE   LAST  DECADE.  1 69 

Utmost  last  provincial  band,"  yet  not  of  the  •  pure 
Quirites,  the  genuine  citizens  of  the  sacred  city  of 
Mr  Arnold's  thought :  and  he  seceded  from  this  latter 
in  not  a  few  of  those  estimable  but  unimportant  Irish 
essays  which  have  been  noticed  in  the  last  chapter. 

But  the  literary  contents  of  Mixed  Essays  are  very 
interesting,  and  the  Johnson  paper  (really  a  preface 
to  the  six  selected  lives,  which  he  edited  for  Messrs 
Macmillan  in  1878)  is  a  most  excellent  piece  of  work. 
His  selection  of  the  Lives  is  perhaps  not  quite  unerring. 
For  he  ought  surely  to  have  given  the  "  Cowley,"  with  its 
(from  his  own  point  of  view)  invaluable /^/W  ^<?  r^/t';'(? 
in  the  estimate  of  the  "  metaphysicals."  And  he'  might 
have  missed  the  "  Swift,"  which,  though  extremely  inter- 
esting as  a  personal  study  from  its  mixture  of  prejudice 
and  constraint,  its  willingness  to  wound,  and  yet — not 
its  fear  but — its  honest  compunction  at  striking,  is,  for 
the  purpose  of  the  volume,  misplaced.  But  he  had  a 
right  to  give  what  he  chose :  and  his  preface  has 
points  of  the  very  highest  value.  The  opening  passage 
about  the  point  de  repere  itself,  the  fixed  halting-place 
to  which  we  can  always  resort  for  fresh  starts,  fresh 
calculations,  is  one  of  the  great  critical  loci  of  the 
world,  and  especially  involves  the  main  contribution 
of  the  nineteenth  century  to  criticism  if  not  to  litera- 
ture altogether.  We  may  exalt,  without  very  much 
doubt  or  dread,  the  positive  achievements  of  the  century 
of  Tennyson  and  Browning,  of  Carlyle  and  Thackeray, 
of  Heine  and  Hugo.      But  we  have  seen  such  strange 


I/O  MATTHEW  ARNOLD. 

revolutions  in  this  respect  that  it  may  not  do  to  be 
too  confident.  The  glory  of  which  no  man  can  de- 
prive our  poor  dying  siecie  is  that  not  one,  of  all  the 
others  since  history  began,  has  taken  such  pains  to  under- 
stand those  before  it,  has,  in  other  words,  so  discovered 
and  so  utilised  the  value  of  points  de  repere.  It 
may  be  that  this  value  is,  except  in  the  rarest  cases, 
all  that  a  critic  can  ever  pretend  to — that  he  may  be 
happy  if,  as  few  do,  he  reaches  this.  But  in  the 
formulation  of  the  idea  (for  he  did  much  more  than 
merely  borrow  it  from  the  French)  Mr  Arnold  showed 
his  genius,  his  faculty  of  putting 

"What  oft  was  thought  but  ne'er  so  well  expressed." 

And  when  a  man  does  this  in  prose  or  in  verse,  in  criti- 
cism or  in  creation,  he  has  his  reward — a  reward  that 
no  man  can  take  away,  even  if  any  one  were  disposed 
to  try. 

As  a  whole.  Mixed  Essays  itself,  which  followed  Last 
Essays  on  Church  and  Religion  at  an  interval  of  two 
years,  is  an  almost  immeasurably  livelier  book  than  its 
predecessor,  and  to  some  judgments  at  least  seems  to 
excel  that  predecessor  in  solid  value  as  much  as  in  the 
graces.  "  Mixed "  is  perhaps  not  a  strictly  accurate 
title,  for  the  volume  consists  of  two  halves,  the  contents 
of  each  of  which  are  homogenous  enough,  but  which  have 
next  to  nothing  to  do  with  each  other.  But  even  in 
the  non-literary  essays  we  are  out  of  "The  Wilderness" 
in   its   worst   sense.     Most   of  the   essays   had,  as   has 


THE   LAST  DECADE.  171 

just  been  shown,  appeared  in  different  periodicals^  while 
"Equality"  was  also  delivered  as  a  lecture  during  the 
years  1877  and  1878.  The  exception  was  the  paper 
called  "  Democracy,"  which  he  reprinted  from  his  first 
work  on  Foreign  Schools  in  1861,  where  it  had  appeared 
as  an  Introduction.  The  juxtaposition  is  by  no  means 
uninteresting  or  uninstructive,  though  perhaps  it  is  not 
entirely  favourable  to  the  idea  of  Mr  Arnold's  develop- 
ment as  a  zoon  politicon.  It  has  been  said  before  that 
his  earliest  political  writing  is  a  good  deal  less  fantastic 
and  more  sane  than  that  of  his  middle  period,  and  though 
"the  last  of  life  for  which  the  first  was  made"  was  now 
restoring  to  him  much  of  his  power  in  this  direction, 
yet  he  was  always  much  joined  to  idols  in  matters  polit- 
ical. In  grasp  "  Democracy  "  does  not  quite  come  up  to 
its  rather  ambitious  title ;  and  a  moment's  thought  will 
show  why.  In  1861  Democracy  was  a  very  academic 
subject.  All  projects  for  further  Parliamentary  Reform 
had  failed  utterly  in  England ;  and  nobody  dreamt  of 
what  the  next  five  or  six  years  would  bring.  In  France 
there  was  what  looked  like  a  crushing  military  despotism  : 
in  other  Continental  countries  the  repression  which  had 
followed  the  outbreaks  of  1848-49  was  only  just  being 
relaxed,  or  not  relaxed  at  all.  American  democracy 
had  not  had  its  second  baptism  of  Civil  War.  The 
favourite  fancies  about  the  respective  ethos  of  aris- 
tocracy, of  the  middle  -  class,  and  of  the  lower  do 
indeed  appear,  but  for  the  most  part  Mr  Arnold 
confines   himself  to   the   simple   question    of   State   in- 


172  MATTHEW  ARNOLD. 

terference,  for  which  in  his  own  subject  of  education 
he  was  so  anxious,  and  which  he  would  gladly  have 
seen  extended.  It  has  been  more  than  once  remarked 
already  that  he  may  justly  be  regarded  as  a  politician 
of  more  seriousness  than  he  has  here  been  repre- 
sented as  possessing,  if  espousing  the  cause  of  the 
things  which  actually  happen  is  taken  as  the  criterion. 
For  State  interference  has  grown  and  is  growing  every 
day.  But  then  it  may  be  held — and  as  a  matter  of 
principle  he  would  not  himself  have  contested  it — 
that  a  man's  politics  should  be  directed,  not  by  what 
he  thinks  will  happen,  but  by  what  he  thinks  ought 
to  happen.  And  some  of  us,  while  not  in  love  by 
any  means  with  the  middle  -  class  Liberal  ideas  of 
1 830- 1 860,  think  that  the  saving  grace  of  that  day 
that  is  dead  was  precisely  its  objection  to  State 
interference. 

"Equality,"  which  follows,  and  which  starts  what 
might  be  called  at  the  time  of  the  book  its  contempor- 
ary interest,  is  much  more  far-reaching  and  of  greater 
curiosity ;  indeed,  it  may  perhaps  be  held  to  be  the 
most  curious,  in  a  certain  sense,  of  all  its  author's  writ- 
ings, and  to  give,  in  a  not  fully  satisfactory  but  sug- 
gestive fashion,  a  key  to  his  complex  character  which 
is  supplied  by  no  other  of  his  essays.  That  there  was 
(in  no  silly  or  derogatory  sense  of  an  often  absurdly 
used  word)  a  slightly  un-English  side  to  that  character, 
few  acute  judges  would  deny.  But  its  results,  in  the 
greater  part  of  the  works,  are   so   diffused,  and,  as   it 


THE  LAST  DECADE.  1 73 

were,   subterranean,  that  they  are  difficult  to  extract  and 
concentrate.     Here  we  seem  to  get  the  spirit  much  nearer 
proof.      For  the  EquaHty  which  Mr  Arnold  here  cham- 
pions is  not  English  but  French  equality ;  not  political 
and  judicial  equality  before  the  law,  but  social  equality 
enforced  by  the  law.      He  himself  admits,  and  perhaps 
even    a    little    exaggerates,    his    attitude    of  Athanasius 
cojiira   nuutdum   in    this    respect,    amassing   with    relish 
expressions,   in    the    sense    opposite   to   his   own,    from 
such   representative  and  yet  essentially  diverse  author- 
ities as  Lord  Beaconsfield,  Mr  Gladstone,  Sir  Erskine 
May,    Mr   Froude,   and   Mr   Lowe.      Against   them   he 
arrays     Menander     and     George     Sand  —  a     counter- 
championship   not   itself  suggestive  of  Equality.      This 
may  be   "  only  his  fun  " — a  famous  utterance  which  it 
is  never  more  necessary  to  keep  in   mind   than  when 
speaking  or  writing  of  Mr  Arnold,  for  his  fun,  such  as 
it  was,  was  pervading,  and  occasionally  rather  cryptic. 
But  the  bulk  of  the  paper  is  perfectly  serious.      Social 
equality,    and   its   compulsory   establishment    by   a    law 
against   free   bequest   or   by   public   opinion,    these   are 
his    themes.       He    asserts    that    the    Continent    is    in 
favour   of   them ;    that   the   English   colonies,  ci-deva?it 
and   actual,   are   in   favour   of  them ;    that  the   Greeks 
were   in   favour   of  them ;    that  the   Bible  is  in  favour 
of  them.      He   cites   Mr   Hamerton   as   to   the  virtues 
of  the  French  peasant.      He  renews  his  old  tilt  at  the 
manners  of  the  English  lower-middle  class,  at  Messrs 
Moody  and  Sankey,  at  the  great  "  Jingo  "  song  of  twenty 


174  MATTHEW  ARNOLD. 

years  ago  (as  to  which,  by  the  way,  a  modern  Fletcher 
of  Saltoun  might  have  something  to  say  to-day),  at  the 
Puritans,  at  Mr  Goldwin  Smith,  at  many  things  and 
many  persons. 

I  feel  that  history  has  given  me  at  the  moment 
rather  an  unfair  advantage  over  Mr  Arnold  here.  One 
could  always  pick  plenty  of  holes  in  "  Equality,"  could 
suggest  that  the  Greeks  did  not  make  such  a  very  good 
thing  of  it  with  their  equality  (which  included  slavery) ; 
that  the  Biblical  point  is  far  from  past  argument ;  that 
M.  Zola,  for  instance,  supplies  an  interesting  commen- 
tary on  Mr  Hamerton's  rose-coloured  pictures  of  the 
French  peasantry ;  that  whatever  Mr  Arnold's  own  lot 
may  have  been,  others  who  have  lived  in  small  French 
towns  with  the  commis  voyageur  have  not  found  his 
manners  so  greatly  superior  to  those  of  the  English 
bagman.  But  just  at  this  moment,  and,  in  fact,  in  an 
increasing  degree  ever  since  Mr  Arnold  wrote,  the 
glorification  of  France  has  become  difficult  or  im- 
possible. Sir  Erskine  May,  it  seems,  had  warned  him 
in  vain  about  the  political  effect  of  French  Equality 
even  at  that  time  :  but  one  need  not  confine  oneself  to 
politics.  At  the  end  of  the  nineteenth  century  France 
has  enjoyed  the  blessings  of  social  equality,  enforced  by 
compulsory  division  of  estates,  for  a  hundred  years  and 
more.  Perhaps  equality  has  nothing  to  do  with  the 
decadence  of  her  literature,  with  that  state  of  morals 
which  Mr  Arnold  himself  deplored  with  almost  Puritan 
emphasis,  with  the  state  of  religion  which  he  holds  up 


THE   LAST   DECADE.  1 75 

as  an  awful  example,  fit  to  warn  England  to  flee  to  the 
refuge  of  his  own  undogmatic  Nephelococcygia^  with  the 
ineffable  scandals  of  Panama  and  the  Dreyfus  case,  with 
the  mixture  of  blind  illucidity  and  febrile  passion  which 
characterises  the  French  press.  Only,  what  is  left  ? 
Where  are  the  improvements  due  to  this  great  influence  ? 
They  are,  according  to  Mr  Arnold,  in  the  amiable 
dignity  of  the  French  peasant  and  the  polished  refine- 
ment of  the  French  middle-class.  Frankly,  one  may 
prefer  Hodge  and  Bottles. 

"  Irish  Catholicism  and  British  Liberalism  "  has  less 
actuahty,  and,  moreover,  it  belongs  to  a  group  of  which 
enough  has  been  said  in  reference  to  the  Irish  Essays. 
But  "  Porro  Unum  est  Necessarium  "  possesses  not  merely 
an  accidental  but  a  real  claim  to  fresh  attention,  not 
merely  at  the  moment  when  there  is  at  last  some 
chance  of  the  dream  of  Mr  Arnold's  life,  the  interfer- 
ence of  the  State  in  English  secondary  education,  being 
realised,  but  because  it  is  one  of  the  expressions  of  that 
dream  which  was  in  his  life  so  important.  It  consists 
partly  of  statistics  and  partly  of  a  moan  over  the  fact 
that,  in  the  heat  and  heyday  of  Mr  Gladstone's  levee  en 
masse  against  the  Tory  Government  of  1874-80,  the 
Liberal  programme  contained  nothing  about  this  darling 
object.  And  the  superiority  of  France  is  trotted  out 
again ;  but  it  would  be  cruel  to  insist  any  more.  Yet 
at  last  Mr  Arnold  becomes  practical,  and  contends  for 
pretty  much  the  substance  of  present  Secondary  Educa- 
tion Reform  schemes — limited  inspection,  qualification 


176  MATTHEW  ARNOLD. 

of  masters,  leaving  certificates,  &c.  "  It  do  not  over- 
stimulate,"  to  quote  an  author  to  whom  Mr  Arnold  was 
shortly  to  devote  much  attention ;  but  we  leave  the 
political  or  semi-political  batch  in  considerably  greater 
charity  with  the  author  than  his  prose  volumes  for  years 
past  had  rendered  possible. 

No  reserves,  no  allowances  of  the  least  importance 
are  necessary  in  dealing  with  the  rest  of  the  volume.  I 
do  not  think  it  fanciful  to  discern  a  sort  of  involuntary 
or  rather  unconscious  "Ouf !  "  of  relief  in  the  first,  the 
"Guide  to  English  Literature,"  on  the  subject,  as  has 
been  said,  of  Mr  Stopford  Brooke's  always  excellent  and 
then  novel  Primer.  A  tribute  to  duty  is,  indeed,  paid 
at  starting :  we  are  told  sternly  that  we  must  not  laugh 
(as  it  is  to  be  feared  too  many  of  us  did  and  do)  at  the 
famous  boast  of  the  French  Minister,  as  to  all  the  boys 
in  France  learning  the  same  lesson  at  the  same  hour. 
For  this  was  the  result  of  State  interference :  and  all 
the  works  of  State  interference  are  blessing  and  blessed. 
But,  this  due  rite  paid,  Mr  Arnold  gives  himself  up  to 
enjoyment,  laudation,  and  a  few  good-natured  and,  for 
the  most  part,  extremely  judicious  proposals  for  making 
the  good  better  still.  Even  if  this  last  characteristic 
were  not  present,  it  would  be  unjust  to  call  the  article  a 
puff.  Besides,  are  puffs  so  wholly  bad  ?  A  man  may 
be  not  very  fond  of  sweets,  and  yet  think  a  good  puff 
now  and  then,  a  puff  with  its  three  corners  just  hot 
from  the  oven,  full  of  jam,  light,  artistically  frothed,  to  be 
a  very  pleasing  thing.     And,  as  I  have  said,  Mr  Arnold's 


THE  LAST  DECADE.  1 77 

review  is  much  more  than  a  puff.  Once,  indeed,  there 
is  even  a  hypercriticism,  due  to  that  slight  want  of 
famiharity  with  literary  history  proper  which  has  been 
noticed  more  than  once.  Mr  Arnold  finds  fault  with 
Mr  Brooke  for  adopting,  as  one  of  his  chapter  divisions, 
*'from  the  Restoration  to  George  III."  He  objects  to 
this  that  "George  III.  has  nothing  to  do  with  litera- 
ture," and  suggests  "  to  the  Death  of  Pope  and  Swift." 
This  is  a  curious  mistake,  of  a  kind  which  lesser  critics 
have  often  repeated.  Perhaps  George  HI.  had  nothing 
to  do  with  literature ;  but  his  accession  immediately 
preceded,  and  may  even,  as  the  beginning  of  a  pure 
English  regime,  have  done  something  to  produce,  numer- 
ous appearances  of  the  Romantic  revival — Percy's  Re- 
liques,  Kurd's  Essays,  Macpherson's  Ossian,  The  Castle 
of  Otranfo,  and  others.  The  deaths  of  Pope  and  Swift 
have  no  such  synchronism.  They  mark,  indeed,  the  dis- 
appearance of  the  strongest  men  of  the  old  school,  but 
not  the  appearance  of  even  the  weakest  and  most  in- 
fantine of  the  new.  Still  this,  though  interesting  in  itself, 
is  a  trifle,  and  the  whole  paper,  short  as  it  is,  is  a  sort 
of  Nunc  Di??iittis  in  a  new  sense,  a  hymn  of  praise  for 
dismissal,  not  from  but  to  work — to  the  singer's  proper 
function,  from  which  he  has  been  long  divorced. 

"  Falkland,"  which  follows,  is  less  purely  literary,  but 
yet  closely  connected  with  literature.  One  thinks  with 
some  ruth  of  its  original  text,  which  was  a  discourse  on 
Falkland  by  that  modern  Lucius  Gary,  the  late  Lord 
Carnarvon — the  most  curious  and  pathetic  instance  of 

M 


178  MATTHEW  ARNOLD. 

a  man  of  the  nineteenth  century  speaking  of  one  who 
was  almost  his  exact  prototype,  in  virtues  and  graces  as 
in  weaknesses  and  disabihties  of  temperament,  during 
the  seventeenth.  It  would,  of  course,  have  been 
indecent  for  Mr  Arnold  to  bring  this  parallel  out, 
writing  as  he  did  in  his  own  name  and  at  the  moment, 
and  I  do  not  find  any  reference  to  it  in  the  Letters ;  but 
I  can  remember  how  strongly  it  was  felt  at  the  time. 
His  own  interest  in  Falkland  as  the  martyr  of 
Sweetness  and  Light,  of  lucidity  of  mind  and  large- 
ness of  temper,  was  most  natural,  and  its  sources  most 
obvious.  It  would  be  cruel,  and  is  quite  unnecessary, 
to  insist  on  the  too  certain  fact  that,  in  this  instance  at 
any  rate,  these  excellent  qualities  were  accompanied  by 
a  distinct  weakness  of  will,  by  a  mania  for  sitting  be- 
tween two  stools,  and  by  that — it  may  be  lovable,  it 
may  be  even  estimable — incapacity  to  think,  to  speak, 
to  behave  like  a  man  of  this  world,  which  besets  the 
conscientious  idealist  who  is  not  a  fanatic.  On  the 
contrary,  let  us  not  grudge  Mr  Arnold  a  hero  so  con- 
genial to  himself,  and  so  little  repulsive  to  any  of  us. 
He  could  not  have  had  a  better  subject ;  nor  can 
Falkland  ever  hope  for  a  vates  better  consecrated,  by 
taste,   temper,  and  ability,    to  sing  his  praises. 

Then  we  are  back  again  in  pure  literature,  with  the 
two  notable  Quarterly  articles,  already  glanced  at,  on  M. 
Scherer  as  "  A  French  Critic  on  Milton  "  and  "  A  French 
Critic  on  Goethe."  There  was  a  very  strong  sympathy, 
creditable  to  both,  between  the  two.     M.  Scherer  went 


THE   LAST   DECADE.  1 79 

further  than  Mr  Arnold  in  the  negative  character  of  his 
views  on  religion  ;  but  they  agreed  as  to  dogma.  His 
literary  criticism  was  somewhat  harder  and  drier  than 
Mr  Arnold's ;  but  the  two  agreed  in  acuteness,  lucidity, 
and  a  wide,  if  not  quite  a  thoroughgoing,  use  of  the  com- 
parative method.  Both  were  absolutely  at  one  in  their 
uncompromising  exaltation  of  "  conduct."  So  that  Mr 
Arnold  was  writing  quite  con  aniore  when  he  took  up 
his  pen  to  recommend  M.  Scherer  to  the  British  pubhc, 
which  mostly  knew  him  not  at  that  time. 

But  he  did  not  begin  directly  with  his  main  subject. 
He  had  always,  as  we  have  seen,  had  a  particular 
grudge  at  Macaulay,  who  indeed  represented  in  many 
ways  the  tendencies  which  Mr  Arnold  was  born  to 
oppose.  Now  just  at  this  time  certain  younger  critics, 
while  by  no  means  championing  Macaulay  generally, 
had  raised  pretty  loud  and  repeated  protests  against 
Mr  Arnold's  exaggerated  depreciation  of  the  Lays  as 
"  pinchbeck  " ;  and  I  am  rather  disposed  to  think  that 
he  took  this  opportunity  for  a  sort  of  sally  in  flank. 
He  fastens  on  one  of  Macaulay 's  weakest  points,  a  point 
the  weakness  of  which  was  admitted  by  Macaulay  him- 
self— the  "  gaudily  and  ungracefully  ornamented  "  (as  its 
author  calls  it)  Essay  on  Milton.  And  he  points  out, 
with  truth  enough,  that  its  "  gaudy  and  ungraceful 
ornament "  is  by  no  means  its  only  fault — that  it  is  bad 
as  criticism,  that  it  shows  no  clear  grasp  of  Milton's 
real  merits,  that  it  ignores  his  faults,  that  it  attributes 
to   him   qualities   which   were  the  very  reverse  of    his 


l80  MATTHEW   ARNOLD. 

real  qualities.  He  next  deals  slighter  but  still  telling 
blows  at  Addison,  defends  Johnson,  in  passing,  as  only 
negatively  deficient  in  the  necessary  qualifications,  not 
positively  conventional  like  Addison,  or  rhetorical  like 
Macaulay,  and  then  with  a  turn,  itself  excellently 
rhetorical  in  the  good  sense,  passes  to  M.  Scherer's 
own  dealings  with  the  subject.  Thenceforward  he 
rather  effaces  himself,  and  chiefly  abstracts  and  sum- 
marises the  "  French  Critic's "  deliverances,  laying 
special  stress  on  the  encomiums  given  to  Milton's  style. 
The  piece  is  one  of  his  most  artfully  constructed ;  and 
I  do  not  anywhere  know  a  better  example  of  ingenious 
and  attractive  introduction  of  a  friend,  as  we  may  call 
it,  to  a  new  society. 

The  method  is  not  very  different  in  "A  French  Critic  on 
Goethe,"  though  Carlyle,  the  English  "awful  example" 
selected  for  contrast,  is  less  maltreated  than  Macaulay, 
and  shares  the  disadvantageous  part  with  Lewes,  and 
with  divers  German  critics.  On  the  whole,  this  essay, 
good  as  it  is,  seems  to  me  less  effective  than  the  other ; 
perhaps  because  Mr  Arnold  is  in  less  accord  with  his 
author,  and  even  seems  to  be  in  two  minds  about  that 
author's  subject — about  Goethe  himself.  Earlier,  as 
we  have  partly  seen,  he  had,  both  in  prose  and  in  verse, 
spoken  with  praise — for  him  altogether  extraordinary,  if 
not  positively  extravagant — of  Goethe  ;  he  now  seems  a 
little  doubtful,  and  asks  rather  wistfully  for  "the  just 
judgment  of  forty  years,^'  the  calm  revised  estimate  of 
the  Age  of  Wisdom.      But  j\I.   Scherer's  estimate  is  in 


THE   LAST   DECADE.  l8l 

parts  lower  than  he  can  bring  himself  to  admit ;  and 
this  turns  the  final  passages  of  the  essay  into  a  rather 
unsatisfactory  chain  of  **I  agree  with  this,"  "I  do  not 
agree  with  that."  But  the  paper  retains  the  great  merit 
which  has  been  assigned  to  its  predecessor  as  a  piece 
of  ushering ;  and  that,  we  must  remember,  was  what  it 
was  designed  to  be. 

In   "  George    Sand,"  which    completes    the  volume, 
we  have  Mr  Arnold  no  longer  as  harbinger  of  another, 
but  in  the  character,  in  which  after  all  he  is  most  wel- 
come, of  speaker  on  his  own  account.     His  estimate 
of  this  prolific  a?nuseuse  will  probably  in  the  long-run 
seem  excessive  to  the    majority  of  catholic   and   com- 
parative critics ;  nor  is  it  at  all  difficult  to  account  for 
the  excess.     Mr  Arnold  belonged  exactly  to  the  gener- 
ation to  which  in  England,  even  more  than  in  France, 
George  Sand  came  as  a  soothing  and  sympathetic  ex- 
ponent of  personal   sorrows.     Even   the  works  of  her 
"  storm-and-stress "   period   were   not    too    far    behind 
them  ;  and  her  later  calmer  productions  seem  to  have 
had,  at  least  for  some  natures  among  the  "  discouraged 
generation  of  1850"  (to  which,  as  we  have   said,  Mr 
Arnold    himself    by    his    first    publications    belonged), 
something  of  that  healing  power  which  he  has  assigned, 
in  larger  measure  and  with  greater  truth,  to  Wordsworth. 
A  man  is  never  to  be  blamed  for  a  certain  generous 
overvaluation  of  those  who  have  thus  succoured  him  ;  it 
would  be  as  just  to  blame  him  for  thinking  his  mother 
more  beautiful,  his  father  wiser  than  they  actually  were. 


1 82  MATTHEW  ARNOLD. 

And  Mr  Arnold's  obituary  here  has  a  great  deal  of 
charm.  The  personal  and  biographical  part  is  done 
with  admirable  taste,  not  a  grain  too  much  or  too  little 
of  that  moi  so  hdissable  in  excess,  so  piquant  as  a 
mere  seasoning,  being  introduced :  and  the  panegyric 
is  skilful  in  the  extreme.  To  be  sure,  Mr  Hamerton 
reappears,  and  Mr  Arnold  joins  in  the  chorus  of  delight 
because  the  French  peasant  no  longer  takes  off  his 
hat.  Alas  !  there  is  no  need  to  go  to  the  country  of 
La  Ter7'e  to  discover  this  sign  of  moral  elevation.  But 
the  delusion  itself  is  only  another  proof  of  Mr  Arnold's 
constancy  to  his  early  ideas.  And  looking  back  on  the 
whole  volume,  one  is  almost  tempted  to  say  that,  barr- 
ing the  first  Essays  in  Criticisjii  itself,  he  had  written 
no  better  book. 

Before  very  long  the  skill  in  selecting  and  editing 
which  had  been  first  applied  to  Johnson's  Lives  found 
extended  opportunities.  Mr  Arnold  had  much  earlier, 
in  the  Essays  in  Criticism,  expressed  a  wish  that  the 
practice  of  introducing  books  by  a  critical  and  bio- 
graphical Essay,  which  had  long  been  naturalised  in 
France,  and  had  in  former  times  not  been  unknown 
in  England,  should  be  revived  among  us.  His  words 
had  been  heard  even  before  he  himself  took  up  the 
practice,  and  for  about  the  usual  time  —  your  thirty 
years  is  as  a  matter  of  fact  your  generation — it  flour- 
ished and  prospered,  not  let  us  hope  to  the  great  detri- 
ment of  readers,  and  certainly  to  the  modest  advan- 
t?.ge  of  the  public  man  when  vexed  by  want  of  pence. 


THE   LAST   DECADE.  1 83 

Nor  can  it  exactly  he  said  to  have  ceased — though  for 
some  years  grumbles  have  been  uttered.  "  Why,"  says 
one  haughty  critic, — "  why  mar  a  beautiful  edition  of 
So-and-so's  works  by  incorporating  with  them  this  or 
that  man's  estimate  of  their  value  ?  "  "  The  publishers," 
says  an  inspired  communique^  '*  are  beginning  to  recognise 
that  the  public  has  no  need  of  such  things  in  the  case  of 
works  of  established  repute,  of  which  there  is  nothing 
new  to  be  said."  No  doubt  both  these  are  genuine 
utterances  :  no  doubt  the  haughty  critic  would  have 
steadily  refused  to  "  mar "  the  book  by  his  estimate  if 
he  had  been  asked  to  do  so ;  no  doubt  the  particular 
firm  of  publishers  were  not  m  the  least  influenced  by  a 
desire  to  save  the  ten,  twenty,  fifty,  or  a  hundred 
guineas  which  this  or  that  man  might  have  demanded 
for  saying  nothing  new. 

But  Mr  Arnold  did  not  agree  with  these  severe  folk. 
He  thought — and  not  a  few  good  wits  have  thought 
with  him — not  only  that  these  Introductions  are  an 
opportunity  for  men  like  himself,  with  original  gifts  of 
thought  and  style,  to  display  these  gifts,  but  that  the 
mighty  public,  for  all  Its  knowledge  of  everything  that 
has  been  thought  and  said  about  ever^-body,  might 
find  something  new  to  it  even  m  the  observations  of 
lesser  folk.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  of  course,  and  neither 
to  talk  nor  to  quote  nonsense,  the  utility  of  such  Intro- 
ductions, even  if  moderately  well  done,  is  unmistakable. 
Not  one  in  a  thousand  of  the  probable  readers  of  any 
book    has    all    the    information    which    even    a    fairly 


1 84  MATTHEW  ARNOLD. 

competent  introducer  will  put  before  him;  not  one  in 
a  hundred  knows  the  previous  opinions  of  the  author; 
not  many  possess  that  acquaintance  with  his  whole 
work  which  it  is  part  of  the  business  of  the  introducer 
to  acquire,  and  adjust  for  the  better  understanding 
of  the  particular  book.  Of  course,  if  an  Introduc- 
tion is  imperfectly  furnished  with  fact  and  thought 
and  reading — if  it  is  desultory,  in  bad  taste,  and  so 
forth  —  it  had  better  not  be  there.  But  this  is  only 
saying  that  a  bad  Introduction  is  a  bad  thing,  which 
does  not  get  us  much  beyond  the  intellectual  edifi- 
cation of  the  niece  of  Gorboduc.  Unless  the  intro- 
ducer is  a  boggier,  the  Introduction  will  probably  do 
good  to  those  who  want  it  and  can  be  neglected  by 
those  who  don't ;  while  in  the  rarer  and  better  cases 
it  will  itself  acquire,  or  even  possess  from  the  first,  that 
very  value  as  a  point  de  repere  which  Mr  Arnold  had  dis- 
cussed. It  will  be  good  relatively  and  good  in  itself, 
— a  contribution  at  once  to  the  literature  of  knowledge 
and  to  the  literature  of  power. 

Of  Mr  Arnold's  efforts  in  editing  I  may  be  permitted 
to  neglect  his  "  intromittings  "  with  Isaiah,  for  reasons 
already  sufficiently  given.  In  more  hopeful  matter 
there  are  three  examples  which  are  not  soon  likely 
to  lose  interest  or  value  :  the  selection  of  his  own 
poems,  that  from  Wordsworth,  and  that  from  Byron. 
To  the  first  the  English  habits  of  his  own  day  did 
not  permit  him  to  prefix  any  extensive  Introduction, 
and  though  the  principle  is  sound,  one  is  almost  sorry 


THE  LAST  DECADE.  1 85 

for  the  application.  Neither  Wordsworth  nor  Cole- 
ridge would  have  had  any  scruples  in  doing  this,  and 
while  Mr  Arnold  had  the  sense  of  the  ludicrous  which 
Wordsworth  lacked,  he  was  less  subject  to  disastrous 
divagations  than  Coleridge.  Still,  the  1853  Preface 
enables  those  who  have  some  slight  power  of  expan- 
sion to  fill  in  what  is  wanted  from  the  point  of  view 
of  purpose ;  and  the  selection  itself  is  quite  excellent. 
Almost  the  only  things  that,  as  a  basis  for  a  good 
knowledge  of  the  poet,  one  finds  it  necessary  to 
subjoin,  are  the  beautiful  Resignation^  which  Mr 
Humphry  Ward  had  the  good  taste  to  include  in  the 
appendix  to  his  English  Poets ;  and  the  curious,  char- 
acteristic, and  not  much  short  of  admirable  Dreain^ 
which  in  the  earlier  issues  formed  part  of  Switzer- 
land^ and  should  never  have  been  excluded  from  it. 
It  is  probably  the  best  selection  by  a  poet  from  his 
own  works  that  has  ever  been  issued,  and  this  is 
saying  not  a  little.  Nor  does  one  like  Mr  Arnold 
less  for  his  saying,  reported  either  by  Mr  Ward  or 
Lord  Coleridge,  that  he  had  rather  have  given  all 
the  poems. 

As  for  the  "Wordsworth"  and  the  "Byron,"  they 
gain  enormously  by  "  this  man's  estimate  of  them," 
and  do  not  lose  by  "  this  man's "  selection.  I  have 
had  occasion,  not  once  or  twice  only,  and  for  pur- 
poses not  invariably  the  same,  to  go  through  the 
Wordsworth  book  carefully,  side  by  side  with  the 
complete   poems,    in    order   to    see    whether    anything 


1 86  MATTHEW  ARNOLD. 

has  necessarily  to  be  added.  I  really  do  not  know 
what  has,  unless  it  be  a  few  of  the  oases  from  the 
deserts  of  the  Excursion^  the  Prelude^  and  the  then 
not  published  Recluse,  Wordsworth's  real  titles  are 
put  in  once  for  all ;  the  things  by  which  he  must 
stand  or  fall  are  there.  The  professor,  the  very 
thorough  -  going  student,  the  literary  historian,  must 
go  farther  ;  the  idle  person  with  a  love  of  literature 
will ;   but  nobody  need. 

And  the  Introduction  (for  after  all  we  can  all  make 
our  selections  for  ourselves,  with  a  very  little  trouble) 
is  still  more  precious.  I  know  few  critical  essays 
which  give  me  more  pleasure  in  reading  and  re-reading 
than  this.  Not  that  I  agree  with  it  by  any  means  as 
a  whole  ;  but  he  is  in  the  mere  "  Petty s  "  of  criticism 
(it  is  true  not  many  seem  to  get  beyond)  who  judges 
a  critical  essay  by  his  own  agreement  with  it.  Mr 
Arnold  puts  Wordsworth,  as  a  poet  and  an  English  poet, 
far  higher  than  I  can  put  him.  He  is  not  so  great  a 
poet  to  my  thinking  as  Spenser  or  Shelley  •  if  it  were 
possible  in  these  competitions  to  allow  weight  for  age, 
he  is  not  as  great  a  poet  as  Keats  ;  I  am  sure  he  is  not 
a  greater  poet  than  Tennyson  -,  I  cannot  give  him  rank 
above  Heine  or  Hugo,  though  the  first  may  be  some- 
times naughty  and  the  second  frequently  silly  or  rhe- 
torical ;  and  when  Mr  Arnold  begins  to  reckon  Moliere 
in,  I  confess  I  am  lost  When  and  where  did  Moliere 
write  poetry  ?  But  these  things  do  not  matter  j  they 
are  the  things  on  which  reviewers  exercise  their  "will 


THE  LAST   DECADE.  1 8/ 

it  be  believed?"  and  on  which  critics  agree  to  differ. 
We  may  include  with  them  the  disparaging  passage  on 
Gautier  (of  whom  I  suspect  Mr  Arnold  knew  little,  and 
whom  he  was  not  quite  fitted  to  judge  had  he  known 
more)  and  the  exaltation  of  "life"  and  "conduct" 
and  all  the  rest  of  it.  These  are  the  colours  of  the 
regiment,  the  blazonry  of  the  knight ;  we  take  them 
with  it  and  him,  and  having  once  said  our  say  against 
them,  pass  them  as  admitted. 

But  what  is  really  precious  is  first  the  excellent 
criticism  scattered  broadcast  all  over  the  essay,  and 
secondly,  the  onslaught  on  the  Wordsworthians.  They 
might  perhaps  retort  with  a  in  quoqiie.  When  Mr 
Arnold  attacks  these  poor  folk  for  saying  that  Words- 
worth's poetry  is  precious  because  its  philosophy 
is  sound,  we  remember  a  certain  Preface  with  its 
"all  depends  on  the  subject,"  and  chuckle  a  little,  a 
very  little.  But  Mr  Arnold  is  right  here.  No  philo- 
sophy, no  subject,  will  make  poetry  without  poetical 
treatment,  and  the  consequence  is  that  The  Excursioji 
and  The  Prelude  are,  as  wholes,  not  good  poems  at  all. 
They  contain,  indeed,  passages  of  magnificent  poetry. 
But  how  one  longs,  how,  as  one  sees  from  this  essay, 
Mr  Arnold  longed,  for  some  mercury  -  process  which 
would  simply  amalgamate  the  gold  out  of  them  and 
allow  us  to  throw  the  dross  down  any  nearest  cata- 
ract, or  let  it  be  blown  away  by  any  casual  hurricano ! 

The  Byron  paper  contains  more  disputable  statements 
— indeed  the  passage  about   Shelley,  if  it  were  quite 


1 88  MATTHEW  ARNOLD. 

serious,  which  may  be  doubted,  would  almost  disqualify 
Mr  Arnold  as  a  critic  of  poetry.  But  it  is  hardly  less 
interesting,  and  scarcely  at  all  less  valuable.  In  the  first 
place,  it  is  a  very  great  thing  that  a  man  should  be  able 
to  admire  both  Byron  and  Wordsworth.  Of  a  mere 
Byronite,  indeed,  Mr  Arnold  has  even  less  than  he  has 
of  a  Wordsworthian  pure  and  simple.  He  makes  the 
most  damaging  admissions  ;  he  has  to  fall  back  on 
Goethe  for  comfort  and  confirmation ;  he  is  greatly  dis- 
turbed by  M.  Scherer's  rough  treatment  of  his  subject. 
In  no  essay,  I  think,  does  he  quote  so  much  from 
others,  does  he  seem  to  feel  it  such  a  relief  to  find  a 
backer,  a  somebody  to  fight  with  on  a  side  point,  a 
somebody  (for  instance  Professor  Nichol)  to  correct  and 
gloss  and  digress  upon  while  complimenting  him.  Mr 
Arnold  is  obviously  not  at  ease  in  this  Zion — which 
indeed  is  a  Zion  of  an  odd  kind.  Yet  this  very  uneasi- 
ness gives  to  the  Essay  a  glancing  variety,  a  sort  of  ani- 
mation and  excitement,  which  are  not  common  things 
in  critical  prelections.  Nor,  though  one  may  think  that 
Mr  Arnold's  general  estimate  of  Byron  is  not  even  half 
as  sound  as  his  general  estimate  of  Wordsworth,  does 
the  former  appear  to  be  in  even  the  slightest  degree 
insincere.  Much  as  there  must  have  been  in  Byron's 
loose  art,  his  voluble  inadequacy  —  nay,  even  in  his 
choice  of  subject — that  was  repellent  to  Mr  Arnold  : 
much  more  as  there  must  have  been  in  his  unchastened 
conduct,  his  flashy  affectations,  his  lack  of  dignity, 
morality,  knue  of  every  kind, — yet  there  were  real  links 


THE   LAST   DECADE.  1 89 

between  them.  Mr  Arnold  saw  in  Byron  an  ally,  if  not 
an  altogether  admirable  or  trustworthy  ally,  against  the 
Philistine.  He  saw  in  him  a  link  with  general  European 
literature,  a  check  and  antidote  to  the  merely  insular. 
Byron's  undoubtedly  "  sincere  and  strong  "  dislike  of  the 
extreme  Romantic  view  of  literature  was  not  distasteful 
to  Mr  Arnold.  Indeed,  in  his  own  earlier  poems  there 
are  not  wanting  Byronic  touches  and  echoes,  not  so 
easy  to  separate  and  put  the  finger  on,  as  to  see  and 
hear  "  confusedly."  Lastly,  he  had,  by  that  sort  of 
reaction  which  often  exhibits  itself  in  men  of  the  study, 
an  obvious  admiration  for  Force — the  admiration  which 
makes  him  in  his  letters  praise  France  up  to  1870 
and  Germany  after  that  date — and  he  thought  he  saw 
Force  in  Byron.  So  that  the  Essay  is  written  with  a 
stimulating  mingle-mangle  of  attraction  and  reluctance, 
of  advocacy  and  admission.  It  is  very  far  indeed  from 
being  one  of  his  best  critically.  You  may,  on  his  own 
principles,  "  catch  him  out "  in  it  a  score  of  times.  But 
it  is  a  good  piece  of  special  pleading,  an  excellent  piece 
of  writing,  and  one  of  the  very  best  and  most  consum- 
mate literary  causeries  in  English. 

In  strict  chronological  order,  a  third  example  of 
these  most  interesting  and  stimulating  Prefaces  should 
have  been  mentioned  between  the  "  Wordsworth  "  and 
the  "  Byron  " — the  latter  of  which,  indeed,  contains  a 
reference  to  it.  This  is  the  famous  Introduction  to 
Mr  T.  H.  Ward's  English  Poets,  which,  in  that  work 
and  in  the  second  series  of  Essays  in  Criticism^  where 


I90  MATTHEW  ARNOLD. 

it  subsequently  appeared,  has  perhaps  had  more  readers 
than  any  other  of  its  author's  critical  papers.  It  con- 
tains, moreover,  that  still  more  famous  definition  of 
poetry  as  "  a  criticism  of  life "  which  has  been  so 
often  attacked  and  has  sometimes  been  defended.  I 
own  to  having  been,  both  at  the  time  and  since,  one 
of  its  most  decided  and  irreconcilable  assailants.  Nor 
do  I  think  that  Mr  Arnold  would  have  much  relished 
the  apology  made,  I  think,  by  Mr  Leslie  Stephen 
since  his  death,  that  its  critics  "  mistake  an  epigram 
for  a  philosophical  definition."  In  the  first  place,  the 
epigrammatic  quality  is  not  clearly  apparent ;  *  and  in 
the  second  place,  an  epigram  would  in  the  particular 
place  have  been  anything  but  appropriate,  while  a 
philosophical  definition  is  exactly  what  vras  wanted. 

Mr  Arnold  himself  never  attempted  any  such  de- 
fence. He  pleaded,  with  literal  justice,  that  the 
phrase  "  a  criticism  of  life "  was  only  part  of  his 
formula,  which  adds,  "  under  the  conditions  fixed 
for  such  a  criticism  by  the  laws  of  poetic  truth  and 
poetic  beauty."  But  this  does  not  make  the  matter 
much  better,  while  it  shows  beyond  controversy  that 
it  was  a  philosophical  definition  that  he  was  attempt- 
ing. It  merely  takes  us  round  in  a  circle,  telling  us 
that  poetry  is  poetical,  that  the  archdeacon  performs 
archidiaconal  functions.  And  while  it  is  not  more 
illuminative  than  that  famous  and  useful  jest,  it  has 
the  drawback  of  being  positively  delusive,  which  the 
jest  is  not.     Unless  we  are  to  assign  some  quite  new 


THK   LAST   DECADE.  I9I 

meaning  to  "  criticism  " — and  the  assignment  of  new 
meanings  to  the  terms  of  an  explanation  is  the  worst 
of  all  explanatory  improprieties — poetry  is  }iot  a  criti- 
cism of  life.  It  may  be  a  passionate  interpretation  of 
life — that  has  seemed  to  some  not  a  bad  attempt  at 
the  unachievable, — a  criticism  it  cannot  be.  Prose 
fiction  may  be  and  should  be  such ;  drama  may  be 
and  should  be  such ;  but  not  poetry.  And  it  is  espe- 
cially unfortunate  that  such  poetry  as  answers  best  to 
the  term  is  exactly  that  poetry  which  Mr  Arnold  liked 
least  Dryden  and  Pope  have  much  good  and  true 
criticism  of  life  :  The  Vanity  of  Hui?ian  Wishes  is  mag- 
nificent criticism  of  life  \  but  Mr  Arnold  has  told  us 
that  Dryden  and  Pope  and  Johnson  are  but  ''classics 
of  our  prose."  That  there  is  criticism  of  life  iti  poetry 
is  true ,  but  then  in  poetry  there  is  everything. 

It  would  also,  no  doubt,  be  possible  to  pick  other  holes 
in  the  paper.  The  depreciation  of  the  "historic  esti- 
mate," instead  of  a  simple  hint  to  correct  it  by  the 
intrinsic,  is  certainly  one.  Another  is  a  distinct  ar- 
bitrariness in  the  commendation  or  discommendation 
of  the  examples  selected.  No  one  in  his  senses 
would  put  the  Chanson  de  Roland  on  a  level  with 
the  Iliad  as  a  whole  ;  but  some  among  those  people 
who  happen  to  possess  an  equal  acquaintance  with 
Greek  and  Old  French  will  demur  to  Mr  Arnold's 
assignment  of  an  ineffably  superior  poetical  quality  to 
one  of  the  two  passages  he  quotes  over  the  other.  So 
yet   again   with    the   denial   of  "  high    seriousness "   to 


192  MATTHEW  ARNOLD. 

Chaucer.  One  feels  disposed  to  enter  and  argue  out 
a  whole  handful  of  not  quite  contradictory  pleas,  such 
as  "  He  has  high  seriousness  "  {vide  the  "  Temple  of 
Mars,"  the  beginning  of  the  Parliament  of  Fowls^  and 
many  other  places):  "  Why  should  he  have  high  serious- 
ness ?  "  (a  most  effective  demurrer) ;  and  "  What  is  high 
seriousness,  except  a  fond  thing  vainly  invented  for  the 
nonce  ?  " 

But,  as  has  so  constantly  to  be  said  in  reference  to 
Mr  Arnold,  these  things  do  not  matter.  He  must  have 
his  catchwords  :  and  so  "  criticism  of  life  "  and  "  high 
seriousness  "  are  introduced  at  their  and  his  peril.  He 
must  have  his  maintenance  of  the  great  classics,  and  so 
he  exposes  what  I  fear  may  be  called  no  very  extensive 
or  accurate  acquaintance  with  Old  French.  He  must 
impress  on  us  that  conduct  is  three  -  fourths  of  life, 
and  so  he  makes  what  even  those  who  stop  short  of 
latreia  in  regard  to  Burns  may  well  think  mistakes  about 
that  poet  likewise.  But  all  the  spirit,  all  the  tendency, 
of  the  Introduction  is  what  it  ought  to  be,  and  the  plea 
for  the  "  real "  estimate  is  as  wholly  right  in  principle 
as  it  is  partly  wrong  in  application. 

It  is  well  borne  out  by  the  two  interesting  articles  on 
Gray  and  Keats  which  Mr  Arnold  contributed  to  the 
same  work.  In  the  former,  and  here  perhaps  only,  do 
we  find  him  putting  his  shoulder  to  the  work  of  critical 
advocacy  and  sympathy  with  an  absolutely  whole  heart. 
With  Wordsworth,  with  Byron,  with  Heine,  he  was  on 
points  more   or  fewer  at  grave  difference ;   though  he 


THE   LAST  DECADE.  1 93 

affected  to  regard  Goethe  as  a  inagtms  Apollo  of  criti- 
cism and  creation  both,  I  think  in  his  heart  of  hearts 
there  must  have  been  some  misgivings ;  and  it  is  im- 
possible that  he  should  not  have  known  his  fancy  for 
people  like  the  Guerins  to  be  mere  engoueinent.  Gray's 
case  was  different.  The  resemblances  between  subject 
and  critic  were  extraordinary.  Mr  Arnold  is  really  an 
industrious,  sociable,  and  moderately  cheerful  Gray 
of  the  nineteenth  century ;  Gray  an  indolent,  recluse, 
more  melancholy  Arnold  of  the  eighteenth.  Again, 
the  literary  quality  of  the  bard  of  the  Elegy  was  ex- 
actly of  the  kind  which  stimulates  critics  most. 
From  Sainte-Beuve  downwards  the  fraternity  has,  justly 
or  unjustly,  been  accused  of  a  tendency  to  extol  writers 
who  are  a  little  problematical,  who  approach  the  second 
class,  above  the  unquestioned  masters.  And  there  was 
the  yet  further  stimulus  of  redressing  wrongs.  Gray, 
though  a  most  scholarly  poet,  has  always  pleased  the 
vulgar  rather  than  the  critics,  and  he  had  the  singular 
fate  of  being  dispraised  both  by  Johnson  and  by  Words- 
worth. But  in  this  paper  of  Mr  Arnold's  the  wheel 
came  full  circle.  Everything  that  can  possibly  be  said 
for  Gray — more  than  some  of  us  would  by  any  means 
indorse — is  here  said  for  him  :  here  he  has  provided 
an  everlasting  critical  harbour,  into  which  he  may  re- 
treat whensoever  the  popular  or  the  critical  breeze 
turns  adverse. 

And   the    Keats,  less   disputable   in   its  general  esti- 
mate,  is    equally  good  in  itself,  and   specially  interest- 

N 


194  MATTHEW  ARNOLD. 

ing  as  a  capital  example  of  Mr  Arnold's  polemic — the 
capital  example,  indeed,  if  we  except  the  not  wholly 
dissimilar  but  much  later  article  on  Shelley's  Life. 
He  is  rather  unduly  severe  on  the  single  letter  of 
Keats  which  he  quotes ;  but  that  was  his  way,  and 
it  is  after  all  only  a  justifiable  rhetorical  readade^  with 
the  intent  to  leap  upon  the  maudlin  defenders  of  the 
poet  as  a  sort  of  hero  of*  M.  Feydeau,  and  rend  them. 
The  improvement  of  the  mere  fashion,  as  compared  with 
the  fantasticalities  of  the  Frietidshif  s  Garland  period,  is 
simply  enormous.  And  the  praise  which  follows  is 
praise  really  in  the  grand  style — praise,  the  style  and 
quality  of  which  are  positively  rejoicing  to  the  heart 
from  their  combination  of  fervour  and  accuracy,  from 
their  absolute  fulfilment  of  the  ideal  of  a  word  shock- 
ingly misused  in  these  latter  days,  the  word  Apprecia- 
tion. The  personal  sympathy  which  Mr  Arnold 
evidently  had  with  Gray  neither  makes  nor  mars 
here ;  all  is  purely  critical,  purely  literary.  And  yet 
higher  praise  has  never  been  given  by  any  save  the 
mere  superlative-sloppers  of  the  lower  press,  nor  juster 
criticism  meted  out  by  the  veriest  critical  Rhada- 
manthus.  Of  its  scale  and  kind,  this,  I  think,  is  the 
most  perfect  example  of  Mr  Arnold's  critical  power, 
and  it  is  so  late  that  it  shows  that  power  to  have 
been  not  merely  far  off  exhaustion,  but  actually,  like 
sound  old  wine,  certain  to  improve  for  years  to  come. 
In  the  seven  years  that  were  left  to  him  after  the 
publication  of, the  Byron^  Mr  Arnold  did  not  entirely 


THE   LAST   DECADE.  I95 

confine  himself  to  the  service  of  his  only  true  mistress 
J^iterature.  Rut  he  never  fell  again  so  completely  into 
the  power  of  Duessa  as  he  had  fallen  between  1867  and 
1877.  His  infidelities  were  chiefly  in  the  direction  of 
politics,  not  of  religion  or  irreligion,  and  they  were  of  a 
less  gay  and  frivolous  character  than  those  of  a  gener- 
ally similar  kind  in  earlier  dates.  They  were  partly 
devoted  to  the  change  which  has  brought  it  about, 
that,  while  during  the  third  quarter  of  the  century  the 
Conservatives  were  in  power,  though  on  three  different 
occasions,  yet  in  each  for  absolutely  insignificant  terms, 
in  the  fourth  Mr  Gladstone's  tenure  of  office  from  1880 
to  1885  has  been  the  only  period  of  real  Liberal  domi- 
nation. But  although  he  dealt  with  the  phenomenon 
from  various  points  of  view  in  such  articles  as  "  The 
Nadir  of  Liberalism,"  the  "  Zenith  of  Conservatism," 
and  so  forth,  it  was  chiefly,  as  was  natural  at  the  time, 
in  relation  to  Ireland  that  he  exercised  his  political  pen, 
and  enough  has  been  said  about  these  Irish  articles  by 
anticipation  above.  Discourses  in  America,  the  result 
of  his  lecturing  tour  to  that  country  in  1883-84,  and 
the  articles  on  Amiel,  Tolstoi,  and  Shelley's  Life,  which 
represent  his  very  last  stage  of  life,  require  more  par- 
ticular attention. 

The  Discourses  in  America,  two  of  them  specially 
written,  and  the  other,  originally  a  Cambridge  "  Rede  " 
discourse,  recast  for  the  Western  Hemisphere,  must 
always  rank  with  the  most  curious  and  interesting  of 
Mr  Arnold's  works  :  but  the  very  circumstances  of  their 


196  MATTHEW  ARNOLD. 

composition  and  delivery  made  it  improbable,  if  not 
impossible,  that  they  should  form  one  of  his  best. 
These  circumstances  were  of  a  kind  which  reproduces 
itself  frequently  in  the  careers  of  all  men  of  any  public 
distinction.  In  his  days  of  comparative  obscurity,  or 
in  some  position  of  "  greater  freedom  and  less  responsi- 
bility," even  when  he  ceases  to  be  obscure,  a  man  deals 
faithfully,  but  perhaps  a  little  flippantly,  with  this  or  that 
person,  thing,  nation,  subject,  doctrine.  Afterwards  he 
is  brought  into  a  relation  with  the  person  or  nation,  into 
a  position  as  regards  the  thing,  subject,  or  doctrine, 
which  necessitates,  if  not  exactly  a  distinct  recantation  in 
the  humiliating  sense  attached  to  the  Latin,  yet  a  more 
or  less  graceful  and  ingenious  palinode  in  the  more 
honourable  one  which  we  allow  to  the  Greek  equivalent 
and  original.  Mr  Arnold  could  never  be  lacking  in 
grace  or  in  ingenuity ;  but  he  certainly  had,  in  his 
earlier  work,  allowed  it  to  be  perfectly  visible  that  the 
world  of  American  politics,  American  manners,  Ameri- 
can institutions  and  ways  generally,  was  not  in  his  eyes 
by  any  means  a  world  all  of  sweetness  or  all  of  light. 

His  sense  of  the  ludicrous,  and  his  sense  of  art,  alike 
precluded  even  the  idea  of  a  clumsy  apology,  and 
though,  as  was  to  be  expected,  the  folk  of  the  baser 
sort  who  exist  everywhere  may  not  have  been  pleased 
with  his  Discourses,  the  people  of  the  United  States 
generally  did  not  owe  him  or  show  him  any  grudge  for 
being  frank  and  consistent  as  well  as  polite.  The 
subjects   were    selected    and    grouped   with   great   skill. 


THE   LAST    DECADE.  I97 

''Numbers"  dealt  with  the  burning  question  of  democ- 
racy, which  must  ever  be  uppermost — or  as  nethermost 
not  less  important — in  a  repubHc  ;  and  dealt  with  it 
after  the  more  moderate,  not  the  extremer  form,  of  that 
combination  of  literature  and  politics  which  Mr  Arnold 
had  always  affected.  "  Literature  and  Science,"  the 
middle  discourse,  attacked  a  question  which,  so  far  as 
the  nationality  of  his  audience  was  concerned,  had 
nothing  burning  about  it,  which  the  lecturer  was  sing- 
ularly well  qualified  to  treat  from  the  one  side,  and 
which  is  likely  to  retain  its  actuality  and  its  moment 
for  many  a  day  and  year,  perhaps  many  a  century. 
"  Emerson,"  the  last,  descended  from  generalities  to  the 
consideration  of  a  particular  subject,  at  once  specially 
American  and  specially  literary.  It  would  have  been 
hard  indeed  to  exhibit  better  composition  in  the  group- 
ing of  the  subjects  as  regards  their  classes,  and  criticism 
may  be  defied  to  find  better  examples  of  each  class  than 
those  actually  taken. 

It  is  not  clear  that  quite  such  high  praise  can  be 
given  to  the  execution,  and  the  reason  is  plain  :  it  was 
in  the  execution,  not  in  the  composition  and  scheme, 
that  the  hard  practical  difficulties  of  the  task  came  in. 
Long  harnessed  official  as  he  was,  and  preacher  as  he 
was,  in  his  critical  character,  of  Law,  Order,  Restrain.t, 
Mr  Arnold  was  both  too  much  of  an  Englishman  and 
too  much  of  a  genius  not  to  be  ill  to  ride  with  the  curb. 
And,  save  perhaps  in  "  Literature  and  Science  "  (which 
was  not  at  first  written  for  an  American  audience  at  all), 


198  MATTHEW   ARNOLD. 

the  pressure  of  the  curb — I  had  almost  said  of  the  twitch 
—  is  too  often  evident,  or  at  least  suggested.  This 
especially  applies  to  the  first,  the  longest,  the  most 
ambitious,  and,  as  its  author  would  say,  most  "nobly 
serious"  of  the  three.  There  are  quite  admirable 
things  in  *'  Numbers  "  ;  and  the  descant  on  the  worship 
of  the  great  goddess  Aselgeia,  and  its  effect  upon  France, 
is  not  only  nobly  serious  from  the  point  of  view  of 
morality,  but  is  one  of  Mr  Arnold's  best  claims  to  the 
title  of  a  political  philosopher,  and  even  of  a  political 
prophet.  But  it  is  less  easy  to  say  that  this  passage 
appears  to  be  either  specially  in  place  or  well  composed 
with  its  companions.  Perhaps  the  same  is  true  of  the 
earlier  part,  and  its  extensive  dealings  with  Isaiah  and 
Plato.  As  regards  the  prophet,  it  is  pretty  certain  that 
of  Mr  Arnold's  hearers,  the  larger  number  did  not  care 
to  have  Isaiah  spoken  about  in  that  particular  manner, 
while  some  at  least  of  the  rest  did  not  care  to  have  him 
spoken  about  at  all.  Of  the  philosopher,  it  is  equally 
safe  to  say  that  the  great  majority  knew  very  little,  and 
that  of  the  small  minority,  some  must  have  had 
obstinate  questionings  connected  with  the  appearance 
of  Plato  as  an  authority  on  the  moral  health  of  nations, 
and  v/ith  the  application  of  Mr  Arnold's  own  very  true 
and  very  noble  doctrine  about  Aselgeia.  In  fact,  although 
the  lecture  is  the  most  thoughtful,  the  most  serious  in 
part,  the  most  forcible,  and  the  truest  of  all  Mr  Arnold's 
political  or  social  discourses,  yet  it  shares  with  all  of 
them  the  reproach  of  a  touch  of  desultory  dilettantism. 


THE   LAST   DECADE.  1 99 

The  others,  at  least  equally  interesting   in  parts,  are 
much  better  as  wholes.     The  opening  of  the  "  Emerson," 
with  its  fond  reminiscence  of  Oxford,  is  in  a  vein  which 
Mr  Arnold  did  not  often  work,  but  which  always  yielded 
him  gold.      In  the  words  about  Newman,  one  seems  to 
recognise   very  much    more    than   meets   the   ear  —  an 
explanation  of  much  in  the  Arnoldian  gospel,  on  some- 
thing  like   the   principle  of  revulsion,  of  soured   love, 
which  accounts  for  still  more  in  the  careers  of  his  con- 
temporaries, Mr  Pattison  and  Mr  Froude.      He  is  less 
happy  on  Carlyle — he  never  was  very  happy  on  Carlyle, 
and  for  obvious  reasons  —  but  here  he  jars  less  than 
usual.     As  for  Emerson  himself,  some  readers  have  liked 
Emerson  better   than  Carlyle   at  first,  but   have  found 
that  Carlyle  "  wears  "  a  great  deal  better  than  Emerson. 
It  seems  to  have  been  the  other  way  with  Mr  Arnold ; 
yet  he   is   not  uncritical   about  Emerson  himself.     On 
Emerson's  poetry  he  is  even,  as   on  his  own  principles 
he    was,    perhaps,    bound    to    be,    rather    hypercritical. 
Most  of  it,  no  doubt,  is  not  poetry  at  all ;  but  it  has 
"once  in  a  hundred  years,"  as  Mr  O'Shaughnessy  sang, 
the  blossoming  of  the  aloe,   the  star-shower  of  poetic 
meteors.     And  while,  with  all  reverence,  one  is  bound 
to  say  that  his  denying  the  title  of  "great  writer"  to 
Carlyle  is  merely  absurd — is  one  of  those  caprices  which 
somebody  once  told  us  are  the  eternal  foes  of  art — he 
is   not  unjust   in   denying  that  title  to  Emerson.      Lut 
after  justifying  his  policy  of  not  "cracking  up"  by  still 
further  denying   his  subject  the  title  of  a  great  philo- 


200  MATTHEW   ARNOLD. 

sophic  thinker,  he  proceeds  to  find  a  pedestal  for  him 
at  last  as  a  friend  and  leader  of  those  who  would  "live 
in  the  spirit."  With  such  a  judgment  one  has  no  fault 
to  find,  because  it  must  be  in  all  cases  an  almost  purely 
personal  one.     To  some  Gautier,  with  his  doctrine  of 

**  Sculpte,  lime,  cisele," 

as  the  great  commandment  of  the  creative  artist,  has 
been  a  friend  and  leader  in  the  life  of  the  spirit :  to 
Mr  Arnold  he  was  only  a  sort  of  unspiritual  innkeeper. 
To  Mr  Arnold,  Maurice  de  Guerin,  with  his  second- 
hand Quinetism,  was  a  friend  and  leader  in  the  life  of 
the  spirit ;  others  scarcely  find  him  so.  "  This  is  this 
to  thee  and  that  to  me." 

The  third  (strictly  the  middle)  piece  fortunately 
requires  no  allowances,  and  suffers  from  no  drawbacks. 
**  Literature  and  Science "  is  an  apology  for  a  liberal 
education,  and  for  a  rationally  ordered  hierarchy  of 
human  study,  which  it  would  be  almost  impossible  to 
improve,  and  respecting  which  it  is  difficult  to  think 
that  it  can  ever  grow  obsolete.  Not  only  was  Mr 
Arnold  here  on  his  own  ground,  but  he  was  fighting 
for  his  true  mistress,  with  the  lance  and  sword  and 
shield  that  he  had  proved.  And  the  result  is  like 
that  of  the  fortunate  fights  of  romance  :  he  thrusts 
his  antagonists  straight  over  the  crupper,  he  sends 
them  rolling  on  the  ground,  and  clutching  its  sand 
with  their  fingers.  Even  Mr  Huxley,  stoutest  and 
best   of   all    the    Paynim   knights,    never   succeeded   in 


THE   LAST  DECADE.  20I 

wiping  off  this  defeat ;  and  it  is  tolerably  certain 
that  no  one  else  will.  The  language  of  the  piece  is 
unusually  lacking  in  ornateness  or  fanciful  digression; 
but  the  logic  is  the  strongest  that  Mr  Arnold  ever 
brought  to  bear. 

The  three  last  essays  we  have  mentioned,  apart  from 
the  pathetic  and  adventitious  interest  which  attaches 
to  them  as  last,  would  be  in  any  case  among  the  best  of 
their  author's,  and  their  value  is  (at  least,  as  it  seems 
to  me)  in  an  ascending  scale.  To  care  very  much  for 
that  on  Count  Tolstoi  is  not  easy  for  those  who  are 
unfashionable  enough  not  to  care  very  much  for  the 
eloquent  Russian  himself.  Nothing  is  satisfactory  that 
one  can  only  read  in  translations.  But  Mr  Arnold,  in 
whom  a  certain  perennial  youthfulness  was  (as  it  often, 
if  not  always,  is  in  the  chosen  of  the  earth)  one  of  his 
most  amiable  features,  seems  to  have  conceived  a  new 
engouement  for  this  new  and  quaintly  flavoured  Russian 
literature.  Had  he  lived  longer,  he  probably  would 
have  sung  us  something  in  a  cautionary  strain  ;  just 
as  it  can  never  be  sufficiently  regretted  that  he  did 
not  live  long  enough  to  handle  Ibsenism.  And  it 
would  have  been  very  particularly  pleasant  to  hear 
him  on  those  Memoirs  of  a  Mongol  Minx  (as  they 
have  been  profanely  called),  which  are  assigned  to  the 
great  Marie  Bashkirtseff ;  or  on  those  others  of  the 
learned  She-Mathematician,  who  waited  with  a  friend 
on  a  gentleman  and  suggested  that  he  should  marry 
one  of  them,  no  matter  which,   and   lead    both   about. 


202  MATTHEW  ARNOLD. 

But  the  mixture  of  freshness,  of  passion,  and  of  regard 

for  conduct  in  Count  Tolstoi  could  not  but  appeal  to 

him ;    and   he   has   given   us  a  very  charming  causerie 

on  Anna   Karenina^   notable  —  like    O'Rourke's   noble 

feast — to 

"  Those  who  were  there 
And  those  who  were  not," — 

to  those  who  have  read  the  book  itself,  and  to  those 
who  have  not  yet  found  time  to  read  it. 

I  cannot  plead  much  greater  affection  for  the  lucu- 
brations of  Amiel  than  for  Count  Tolstoi's  dealings 
with  that  odd  compound  of  crudity  and  rottenness, 
the  Russian  nature  ;  but  Mr  Arnold's  "  Amiel "  is  ad- 
mirable. Never  was  there  a  more  "gentlemanly  cor- 
rection," a  more  delicate  and  good-humoured  setting 
to  rights,  than  that  which  he  administers  to  Amiel's 
two  great  panegyrists  (who  happened  to  be  Mr  Arnold's 
own  niece  and  Mr  Arnold's  own  friend).  On  subjects 
like  Maya  and  the  "great  wheel"  it  would  almost 
be  impossible  to  conceive,  and  certainly  impossible  to 
find,  a  happier  commentator  than  Mr  Arnold,  though 
perhaps  in  the  regions  of  theology  he  had  a  private 
Maya,  a  very  Great  Wheel,  of  his  own.  The  firmness 
with  which  he  rebukes  the  maunderings  of  the  Gene- 
vese  hypochondriac — of  whom  some  one  once  unkindly 
remarked  that  he  was  not  so  much  intoxicated  with 
Idealism  as  suffering  from  the  subsequent  headache — 
is  equalled  by  the  kindness  of  the  dealing;  and  the 
quiet  decision  with  which  he   puts   his  fine  writing  in 


THE   LAST   DECADE.  203 

its  proper  place  is  better  still.  Nobody  could  call  Mr 
Arnold  a  Philistine  or  one  insensible  to  finesse^  grace, 
schnsucht^  the  impalpable  and  intangible  charm  of 
melancholy  and  of  thought.  And  his  comments  on 
Amiel's  loaded  pathos  and  his  muddled  medita- 
tion are  therefore  invaluable.  Nor  is  he  less  happy 
or  less  just  in  the  praise  which,  though  not  the  first, 
he  was  one  of  the  first  to  give  to  by  far  the  strongest 
side  of  Amiel's  talent,  his  really  remarkable  power  of 
literary  criticism. 

But  the  best  wine  was  still  kept  for  the  very  last.  It 
will  have  been  observed  in  these  brief  sketches  of  his 
work  that,  since  his  return  to  the  fields  of  literature 
proper,  Mr  Arnold  had  drawn  nearer  to  the  causerie  and 
farther  from  the  abstract  critical  essay, — that  he  had 
taken  to  that  mixture  of  biography,  abstract  of  work, 
and  interspersed  critical  comment  which  Sainte-Beuve. 
though  he  did  not  exactly  invent  it,  had  perfected,  and 
which  somebody,  I  think,  has  recently  described  as 
"  intensely  irritating."  Well !  well !  pearls,  as  we  all 
know,  are  irritating  to  certain  classes  of  consumers.  He 
had  from  the  first  done  this  well,  he  now  did  it  con- 
summately. That  he  took  occasion,  in  the  paper  on 
Shelley's  life  which  appeared  in  the  Nineteenth  Century 
for  January  1888,  to  repeat  his  pet  heresy  about 
Shelley's  poetry,  matters  nothing  at  all.  It  is  an  inno- 
cent defiance,  and  no  attempt  whatever  is  made  to 
support  it  by  argument.  The  purpose  of  the  essay  is 
quite  different.       Already,   some  years    before,    in    his 


204  MATTHEW   ARNOLD. 

article  on  Keats,  Mr  Arnold  had  dealt  some  pretty 
sharp  blows  both  at  the  indiscretion  of  a  certain  class 
of  modern  literary  biographers,  and  at  the  pawing  and 
morbid  sentimentality  of  the  same  persons  or  others. 
He  had  a  new  and  a  better  opportunity  in  the 
matter  he  was  now  handling,  and  he  struck  more 
strongly,  more  repeatedly,  and  with  truer  aim  than 
ever.  From  the  moment  of  its  appearance  to  the 
present  day,  this  piece  has  been  an  unceasing  joy  to 
all  who  love  literature  with  a  sane  devotion.  Its  com- 
position is  excellent ;  it  selects  just  the  right  points, 
dwells  on  them  in  just  the  right  way,  and  drops  them 
just  when  we  have  had  enough.  In  mere  style  it 
yields  to  nothing  of  its  author's,  and  is  conspicuously  and 
quite  triumphantly  free  from  his  repetitions  and  other 
mannerisms.  No  English  writer  —  indeed  one  may 
say  no  writer  at  all — has  ever  tempered  such  a  blend 
of  quiet  contempt  with  perfect  good-humour  and  perfect 
good-breeding.  Dryden  would  have  written  with  an 
equally  fatal  serenity,  but  not  so  lightly ;  Voltaire 
with  as  much  lightness,  but  not  nearly  so  much  like  a 
gentleman  —  which  may  also  be  said  of  Courier. 
Thackeray  could  not  have  helped  a  blaze  of  indig- 
nation— honest  and  healthy,  but  possibly  ]\i%\.  plusqtiam- 
artistic — at  the  unspeakable  persons  who  think  that 
by  blackening  the  unhappy  Harriet  they  can  whiten 
Shelley.  And  alniost  any  one  would  have  been  likely 
either  to  commit  the  complementary  error  of  being  too 
severe  on  Shelley  himself,  or,   if  this  were  avoided,  to 


THE   LAST   DECADE.  205 

underlie  the  charge  of  being  callous  and  unsympathetic. 
Every  one  of  these  rocks,  and  others,  Mr  Arnold  has 
avoided ;  and  he  has  left  us  in  the  piece  one  of  the 
most  perfect  examples  that  exist  of  the  English  essay 
on  subjects  connected  with  literature.  In  its  own 
special  division  of  causerie  the  thing  is  not  only 
without  a  superior,  it  is  almost  without  a  peer ;  its  in- 
sinuated or  passing  literary  comments  are  usually  as 
happy  as  its  censure  of  vital  matters,  and  even  the  above- 
referred-to  heresy  itself  gives  it  a  certain  piquancy.  Ill 
indeed  was  the  fate  that  took  its  author  away  so  soon 
after  the  completion  of  this  little  masterpiece ;  yet 
he  could  not  have  desired  to  leave  the  world  with  a 
better  diploma -performance,  lodged  as  an  example  of 
his  actual  accomplishment. 

We  must  now  return,  for  the  last  time  unfortunately, 
to  the  narrative  of  biographical  events.  December 
1877  furnishes,  in  some  letters  to  his  sister,  evidence 
that  he  was  increasingly  "  spread "  (as  the  French 
say  quaintly)  by  notices  of  parties  and  persons — Mr 
Disraeli  and  Mr  Gladstone,  Mr  Huxley  and  Mr  Ruskin. 
One  is  glad  to  hear  of  the  last-named  that  the  writer 
"  is  getting  to  like  him  " — the  passages  on  the  author 
of  Modern  Fai?tters  in  the  earlier  letters  are  certainly 
not  enthusiastic — and  that  "  he  gains  much  by  his 
fancy  being  forbidden  to  range  through  the  world  of 
coloured  cravats."  This  beneficial  effect  of  evening 
dress  is  not  limited  to  Mr  Ruskin,  and  is  so  well  ex- 
pressed that   one  only  wishes  Mr   Arnold    liad  let  his 


206  MATTHEW   ARNOLD. 

own  fancy  range  more  freely  in  such  epistolary  criticisms 
of  life.  We  hear  that  Mr  J.  R.  Green  "likes  the  Re- 
formation and  Puritanism  less  the  more  he  looks  into 
them,"  again  a  not  uncommon  experience — and  that 
Mr  Stopford  Brooke  is  deriving  much  edification  from 
the  review  of  his  Primer.  The  next  year  continues 
the  series  of  letters  to  M.  Fontanes,  and  gives  a  pleas- 
ant phrase  in  one  to  another  sister,  Mrs  Cropper.  *'  My 
poems  have  had  no  better  friends  in  their  early  and 
needy  days  than  my  own  sisters  " — wherein  Mr  Arnold 
unconsciously  quotes  Goblin  Market^  "  there  is  no 
friend  like  a  sister."  Later,  Mr  Freeman  is  dashed  off, 
a  la  maniere  ?toire,  as  "  an  ardent,  learned,  and  honest 
man,  but  a  ferocious  pedant."  1879  yields  a  letter  to 
Miss  Arnold,  expressing  the  intention  to  send  the 
Wordsworth  book  of  selections  to  M.  Scherer,  and 
beg  him  to  review  it,  which  request  resulted  in  one  of 
the  very  best,  perhaps  the  very  best,  of  that  critic's 
essays  in  English  Literature.  Mr  Arnold  is  distressed 
later  at  Renan's  taking  Victor  Hugo's  poetry  so  pro- 
digiously au  s^rieux^  just  as  some  of  us  have  been,  if  not 
distressed,  yet  mildly  astonished,  at  Mr  Arnold  for  not 
taking  it,  with  all  its  faults,  half  seriously  enough,  Geist, 
the  dachshund,  appears  agreeably,  with  many  other 
birds  and  beasts,  in  a  May  letter  of  this  year,  and 
botany  reinforces  zoology  in  a  later  one  to  Mr  Grant 
Duff. 

1880  is   at   first   less   fertile,   but   gives   an   amusing 
account  of  a  semi-royal  reception   of  Cardinal  Newman 


THE   LAST   DECADE.  20/ 

at  the  Duke  of  Norfolk's  in  May,  and  a  very  interesting 
series  of  letters  from  Pontresina  in  the  autumn.  For- 
tunately for  us  Mrs  Arnold  was  not  with  him,  and  we 
profit  by  his  letters  to  her.  In  one  of  them  there  is 
a  very  pleasing  and  probably  unconscious  touch. 
"  Rapallo  [the  Duchess  of  Genoa's  husband]  smokes 
the  whole  evening :  but  I  think  he  has  a  good  heari.^^ 
And  later  still  we  have  the  curious  and  not  uncharacter- 
istic information  that  he  is  reading  David  Copperfield  for 
the  first  time  (whence  no  doubt  its  undue  predomin- 
ance in  a  certain  essay),  and  the  description  of  Burns 
as  "a  beast  with  splendid  gleams,"  a  view  which  has 
been  fully  developed  since.  On  February  21,  1881, 
there  is  another  interview,  flattering  as  ever,  with  Lord 
Beaconsfield,  and  later  he  tells  M.  Fontanes,  "  I  never 
much  liked  Carlyle,"  which  indeed  we  knew.  The 
same  correspondent  has  the  only  references  preserved 
to  Dean  Stanley's  death ;  but  the  magnificent  verses 
which  that  death  produced  make  anything  else  super- 
fluous. They  appeared  in  the  first  number  of  the  Nine- 
teenth Century  for  1882,  when  New  Year's  Day  gives 
us  a  melancholy  prediction.  If  "  I  live  to  be  eighty 
[/>.,  in  some  three  years  from  the  present  moment], 
I  shall  probably  be  the  only  person  in  England  who 
reads  anything  but  newspapers  and  scientific  publica- 
tions." Too  gloomy  a  view,  let  us  hope ;  yet  with 
something  in  it.  And  a  letter,  a  very  little  later,  gives 
us  interesting  hints  of  his  method  in  verse  composition, 
which  was  to  hunt  a  Dictionary  (Richardson's)  for  good 


208  MATTHEW   ARNOLD. 

but  unusual  words — Theophile  Gautier's  way  also,  as  it 
happens,  though  probably  he  did  not  know  that. 

These  later  letters  contain  so  many  references  to 
living  people  that  one  has  to  be  careful  in  quoting 
from  them ;  but  as  regards  himself,  there  is  of  course 
no  such  need  of  care.  That  self-ruthlessness  which 
always  prevented  him  from  scamping  work  is  amaz- 
ingly illustrated  in  one  of  October  1882,  which  tells 
how  he  sat  up  till  five  in  the  morning  rewriting  a 
lecture  he  was  to  deliver  in  Liverpool,  and  got  up  at 
eight  to  start  for  the  place  of  delivery.  Let  us  hope 
that  a  champagne  luncheon  there  —  "  chiefly  doctors, 
but  you  know  I  like  doctors "  —  revived  him  after 
the  night  and  the  journey.  And  two  months  later 
he  makes  pleasant  allusion  to  "  that  demon  Traill," 
in  reference  to  a  certain  admirable  parody  of  Poor 
Matthias.  He  had  thought  Mr  Gladstone  "  hope- 
lessly prejudiced  against "  him,  and  was  proportion- 
ately surprised  when  in  August  1883  he  was  offered 
by  that  Minister  a  pension  ot  ;^2  5o  for  service  to 
the  poetry  and  literature  of  England.  Few  Civil  List 
pensions  have  been  so  well  deserved.  But  j\Ir  Arnold, 
as  most  men  of  his  quahty  would  have  been,  was 
at  once  struck  with  the  danger  of  evil  constructions 
being  put  by  the  baser  sort  on  the  acceptance  of 
an  extra  allowance  from  public  funds  by  a  man  who 
already  had  a  fair  income  from  them,  and  a  comfort- 
able pension  in  the  ordmary  way  to  look  forward  to. 
Mr   John   Morley,  however,  and  Lord  Lingen,  luckily 


THE   LAST  DECADE.  209 

succeeded  in  quieting  his  scruples,  and  only  the  very 
basest  sort  grumbled.  The  great  advantage,  of  course, 
was  that  it  enabled  him  to  retire,  as  soon  as  his  time 
was  up,  without  too  great  loss  of  income. 

A  lecturing  tour  to  America  was  already  planned,  and 
October  7,  1883  is  the  last  date  from  Cobham,  "New 
York  "  succeeding  it  without  any ;  for  Mr  Arnold  had 
the  reprehensible  and,  in  official  persons,  rare  habit 
of  very  constantly  omitting  dates,  though  not  places. 
The  St  Nicholas  Club,  "a  delightful,  poky,  dark,  ex- 
clusive little  old  club  of  the  Dutch  families,"  is  the 
only  place  in  which  he  finds  peace.  For,  as  one 
expected,  the  interviewers  made  life  terrible.  These 
American  letters  are  interesting  reading  enough,  but 
naturally  tend  to  be  little  more  than  a  replica  of 
similar  letters  from  other  Englishmen  who  have  done 
the  same  thing.  As  has  been  quite  frankly  admitted 
here,  Mr  Arnold  never  made  any  effort,  and  seldom 
seems  to  have  been  independently  prompted,  to  write 
what  are  called  "  amusing "  letters  :  he  merely  tells  a 
plain  tale  of  journeys,  lectures,  meals,  persons,  scenery, 
manners  and  customs,  &c.  Chicago  seems  to  have 
vindicated  its  character  for  "  character "  by  hospitably 
forcing  him  to  eat  dinner  and  supper  "  on  end,"  and 
by  describing  him  in  its  newspapers  as  "  an  elderly 
bird  pecking  at  grapes  on  a  trellis."  The  whole 
tour,  including  a  visit  to  Canada,  lasted  nearly  five 
months,  and  brought — not  the  profit  which  some  people 
expected,  but — a  good  sum,  with  wrinkles  as  to  more  if 

O 


210  MATTPIEW   ARNOLD. 

the  experiment  were  repeated.  And  when  he  came  back 
to  England,  the  lectures  were  collected  and  printed. 

In  February  1885  we  have,  addressed  to  his  eldest 
daughter,  then  married  and  living  in  America,  a  def- 
inition of  "real  civilisation"  as  the  state  "when  the 
world  does  not  begin  till  8  p.m.  and  goes  on  from 
that  till  I  A.M.,  not  later."  This  is,  though  doubtless 
jestful,  really  a  point  de  rep^re  for  the  manners  of  the 
later  nineteenth  century  as  concerns  a  busy  man  who 
likes  society.  In  the  eighteenth,  and  earlier  in  the 
nineteenth,  men  as  busy  as  Mr  Arnold  practically  ab- 
stained from  "  the  world "  except  quite  rarely,  while 
"  the  world  "  was  not  busy.  The  dachshunds  come  in 
for  frequent  mention. 

On  a  Sunday  in  May  of  this  year  comes  the  warn- 
ing of  "  a  horrid  pain  across  my  chest,"  which,  how- 
ever, "  Andrew  Clark  thinks  [wrongly,  alas  !]  to  be  not 
heart"  but  indigestion.  The  Discourses  in  America^ 
for  which  their  author  had  a  great  predilection,  came 
out  later.  In  August  the  pain  is  mentioned  again ; 
and  the  subsequent  remark,  "  I  was  a  little  tired,  but 
the  cool  champagne  at  dinner  brought  me  round,"  is 
another  ominous  hint  that  it  was  not  indigestion. 
Two  of  the  most  valuable  of  all  the  letters  come  in 
October,  one  saying,  "  I  think  Oxford  is  still,  on  the 
whole,  the  place  in  the  world  to  which  I  am  most 
attached"  ["And  so  say  all  of  us"];  the  otlier,  after 
some  notice  of  the  Corpus  plate,  telling  how  "  I  got 
out   to    Hinksey  and    up   the    hill   to   within    sight    of 


THE   LAST   DECADE.  211 

the  Cumnor  firs.  I  cannot  describe  the  effect  which 
this  landscape  ahvays  has  upon  me  :  the  hillside  with 
its  valleys,  and  Oxford  in  the  great  Thames  valley 
below."  And  this  walk  is  again  referred  to  later.  He 
was  pleased  by  a  requisition  that  he  should  stand  yet 
again  for  the  Poetry  Professorship,  though  of  course 
he  did  not  accede  to  it.  And  at  the  beginning  of 
winter  he  had  a  foreign  mission  (his  last)  to  Berlin, 
to  get  some  information  for  the  Government  as  to 
German  school  fees.  He  w^as  much  lionised,  and  seems 
to  have  enjoyed  himself  very  much  during  his  stay,  the 
Crown  Princess  being  specially  gracious  to  him. 

Nor  was  he  long  in  England  on  his  return, 
though  long  enough  to  bring  another  mention  of  the 
chest  pain,  and  an  excellent  definition  of  education 
— would  there  were  no  worse  ! — "  Reading  five  pages 
of  the  Greek  Anthology  every  day,  and  looking  out  all 
the  words  I  do  not  know."  In  February  1886  he 
was  back  again  investigating  the  Swiss  and  Bavarian 
school  systems ;  and  that  amiable  animal- worship  of 
his  receives  a  fresh  evidence  in  the  mention  and 
mourning  of  the  death  of  "dear  Lola"  (not  Montes, 
but  another;  in  short,  a  pony),  with  a  sigh  for  "a  incche 
of  her  hair."  The  journey  was  finished  by  way  of 
France  towards  the  end  of  March.  At  Hamburg  Mr 
Arnold  was  "  really  [and  very  creditably]  glad  to  have 
had  the  opportunity  of  calling  a  man  Your  ^^lagnifi- 
cence,"  that  being,  it  seems,  the  proper  official  style 
in   addressing   the   burgomaster.     And    May  took   him 


212  MATTHEW   ARNOLD. 

back  to  America,  to  see  his  married  daughter  and 
divers  old  friends.  He  remained  there  till  the  be- 
ginning of  September,  improving,  as  he  thought,  in 
health,  but  meeting  towards  the  close  an  awkward 
bathing  accident,  which  involved  no  risk  of  drowning, 
but  gave  him  a  shock  that  was  followed  by  a  week 
or  two  of  troublesome  attacks  of  pain  across  the 
chest.  There  is  very  much  in  the  letters  of  the  time 
about  the  political  crisis  of  1886.  His  retirement  from 
official  work  came  in  November,  and  the  letters  are 
fuller  than  ever  of  delight  in  the  Cobham  landscape. 
But  the  warnings  grew  more  frequent,  and  we  know 
that  long  before  this  he  had  had  no  delusions  about 
their  nature.  Indeed,  it  is  doubtful  whether  he  had 
ever  had  any,  considering  the  fact  of  the  malady,  which 
had,  as  he  says  in  a  singularly  manly  and  dignified  com- 
mentatio  mortis  dated  January  29,  1887,  struck  down 
his  father  and  grandfather  in  middle  life  long  before 
they  came  to  his  present  age.  He  "refuses  every  in- 
vitation to  lecture  or  make  addresses."  The  letters  of 
1887,  too,  are  very  few,  and  contain  little  of  interest, 
except  an  indication  of  a  visit  to  Fox  How ;  while  much 
the  same  may  be  said  of  those,  also  few,  from  the  early 
months  of  1888.  The  last  of  all  contains  a  reference 
to  Robert  Elsmere.  Five  days  later,  on  April  15,  a 
sudden  exertion,  it  seems,  brought  on  the  fatal  attack, 
and  he  died.  He  had  outlived  his  grand  climacteric  of 
sixty-three  (which  he  had  thought  would  be  "  the  end  as 
well  as  the  climax  ")  by  two  years  and  three  months. 


213 


CHAPTER    VI. 


CONCLUSION. 


The  personal  matters  which  usually,  and  more  or  less 
gracefully,  fill  the  beginning  of  the  end  of  a  biography, 
are  perhaps  superfluous  in  the  case  of  a  man  who  died 
so  recently,  and  who  was  so  well  known  as  Mr  Matthew 
Arnold.  Moreover,  if  given  at  all,  they  should  be  given 
by  some  one  who  knew  him  more  intimately  than  did 
the  present  writer.  He  was  of  a  singularly  agreeable 
presence,  without  being  in  the  sense  of  the  painter's 
model  exactly  "handsome";  and  in  particular  he  could 
boast  a  very  pleasant  and  not  in  the  least  artificial 
smile.  Some  artificiality  of  manner  was  sometimes 
attributed  to  him,  I  think  rather  unjustly ;  but  he 
certainly  had  "  tricks  and  manners "  of  the  kind  very 
natural  to  men  of  decided  idiosyncrasy,  unless  they 
transcend  all  mere  trick,  after  the  fashion  which  we 
know  in  Scott,  which  we  are  sure  of,  without  knowing, 
in  Shakespeare.  One  of  these  Mr  George  Russell 
glances  at  in  the  preface  to  the  Letters^  a  passage  which 
I   read  with   not  a  little  amusement,  because  I  could 


214  MATTHEW   ARNOLD. 

confirm  it  from  a  memory  of  my  only  conversation 
with  Mr  Arnold.  He  had  been  good-humouredly  ex- 
postulating with  me  for  overvaluing  some  French  poet. 
I  forget  at  the  distance  of  seventeen  or  eighteen  years 
who  it  was,  but  it  was  not  Gautier.  I  replied  in  some 
such  words  as,  "  Well  ;  perhaps  he  is  not  very  im- 
portant in  himself,  but  I  think  he  is  '  important  for  us,' 
if  I  may  borrow  that."  So  he  looked  at  me  and  said, 
"/  didn't  write  that  anywhere,  did  I?"  And  when  I 
reminded  him  that  he  had  told  us  how  Sainte-Beuve 
said  it  of  Lamartine,  he  declared  that  he  had  quite 
forgotten  it.  Which  might,  or  might  not,  be  Socratic, 
But  I  should  imagine  that  the  complaints  of  his 
affectations  in  ordinary  society  were  as  much  exagger- 
ated as  I  am  sure  that  the  opposite  complaints  of  the 
humdrum  character  of  his  letters  are.  Somebody 
talks  of  the  "  wicked  charm  "  which  a  popular  epithet 
or  nickname  possesses,  and  something  of  the  sort 
seems  to  have  hung  about  "The  Apostle  of  Culture," 
"The  Prophet  of  Sweetness  and  Light,"  and  the  rest. 
He  only  deserved  his  finical  reputation  inasmuch  as 
he  was  unduly  given  to  the  use  of  these  catch-words, 
not  because  he  in  any  undue  way  affected  to  "  look 
the  part "  or  live  up  to  them.  And  as  for  the  letters, 
it  must  be  remembered  that  he  was  a  very  busy  man, 
with  clerical  work  of  the  official  kind  enough  to  disgust 
a  very  Scriblerus ;  that  he  had,  so  far  as  the  published 
letters  show  us,  no  very  intimate  friend,  male  or  (still 
better)  female,  outside  his  own  family ;  and  further,  that 


CONCLUSION.  215 

the  degeneration  of  the  art  of  letter-writing  is  not  a 
mere  phrase,  it  is  a  fact.  Has  any  of  my  readers  many 
— or  any  —  correspondents  like  Scott  or  like  Southey, 
like  Lamb  or  like  FitzGerald,  like  Madame  de  Sevigne 
or  like  Lady  Mary?  He  is  lucky  if  he  has.  Indeed, 
the  simplicity  of  the  Letters  is  the  very  surest  evidence 
of  a  real  simplicity  in  the  nature.  Li  the  so-called  best 
letter-writers  it  may  be  shrewdly  suspected  that  this 
simplicity  is,  with  rare  exceptions,  absent.  Scott  had 
it ;  but  then  Scott's  genius  as  a  novelist  overflowed 
into  his  letters,  as  did  Southey's  talent  of  universal 
writing,  and  Lamb's  unalterable  quintessence  of  quaint- 
ness.  But  though  I  will  allow  no  one  to  take  pre- 
cedence of  me  as  a  champion  of  Madame  de  Sevigne, 
I  do  not  think  that  simplicity  is  exactly  the  note  of 
that  beautiful  and  gracious  person  ;  it  is  certainly  not 
that  of  our  own  Lady  Mary,  or  of  Horace  Walpole, 
or  of  Pope,  or  of  Byron.  Some  of  these,  as  we  know, 
or  suspect  with  a  strength  equal  to  knowledge,  write 
with  at  least  a  sidelong  glance  at  possible  publication  ; 
some  ^Yith  a  deliberate  intention  of  it ;  all,  I  think, 
with  a  sort  of  unconscious  consciousness  of  "  how  it 
will  look "  on  paper.  Of  this  in  Mr  Arnold's  letters 
there  is  absolutely  no  sign.  Even  when  he  writes  to 
comparative  strangers,  he  never  lays  himself  out  for  a 
"  point "  or  a  phrase,  rarely  even  for  a  joke.  To  his 
family  (and  it  should  be  remembered  that  the  immense 
majority  of  the  letters  that  we  possess  are  family  letters) 
he  is  naturally  more  familiar,   but  the  familiarity  doe? 


2l6  MATTHEW  ARNOLD. 

not  bring  with  it  any  quips  or  gambols.  Only  in  the 
very  early  letters,  and  chiefly  in  those  to  Wyndham 
Slade,  is  there  any  appearance  of  second  thought,  oi 
"conceit,"  in  the  good  sense.  Later,  he  seems  to  have 
been  too  much  absorbed  in  his  three  functions  of  official, 
critic,  and  poet  to  do  more  than  shake  hands  by  letter 
and  talk  without  effort. 

But  if  he,  as  the  phrase  is,  "put  himself  out"  little 
as  to  letter-writing,  it  was  by  no  means  the  same  in 
those  other  functions  which  have  been  just  referred  to. 
In  later  years  (it  is  Mr  Humphry  Ward,  I  think,  who 
is  our  sufficient  authority  for  it)  poetry  was  but  occa- 
sional amusement  and  solace  to  him,  prose  his  regular 
avocation  from  task  -  work ;  and  there  is  abundant 
evidence  that,  willingly  or  unwiUingly,  he  never  allowed 
either  to  usurp  the  place  of  the  vocation  which  he  had 
accepted.  Not  everybody,  perhaps,  is  so  scrupulous. 
It  is  not  an  absolutely  unknown  thing  to  hear  men 
boast  of  getting  through  their  work  somehow  or  other, 
that  they  may  devote  themselves  to  parerga  which  they 
like,  and  which  they  are  pleased  to  consider  more 
dignified,  more  important,  nearer  the  chief  end  of  man. 
And  from  the  extremely  common  assumption  that  other 
people,  whether  they  confess  this  or  not,  act  upon  it, 
one  may  at  least  not  uncharitably  suppose  that  a  much 
larger  number  would  so  act  if  they  dared,  or  had  the 
opportunity.  This  was  not  Mr  Arnold's  conception  of 
the  relations  of  the  hired  labourer  and  the  labour  which 
gains  him  his  hire.     Not  only  does  he  seem  to  have 


CONCLUSION.  217 

performed  his  actual  inspecting  duties  with  that  exact 
punctiHousness  which  in  such  cases  is  much  better  than 
zeal,  but  he  did  not  grudge  the  expenditure  of  his  art 
on  the  requirements,  and  not  the  strict  requirements 
only,  of  his  craft.  The  unfitness  of  poets  for  business 
has  been  often  enough  proved  to  be  a  mere  fond  thing 
vainly  invented ;  but  it  was  never  better  disproved  than 
in  this  particular  instance. 

Of  the  manner  in  which  he  had  discharged  these 
duties,  some  idea  may  be  formed  from  the  volume  of 
Reports  which  was  edited,  the  year  after  his  death,  by 
Sir  Francis  Sandford.  It  would  really  be  difficult  to 
imagine  a  better  display  of  that  *'  sweet  reasonableness," 
the  frequency  of  which  phrase  on  a  man's  lips  does  not 
invariably  imply  the  presence  of  the  corresponding  thing 
in  his  conduct.  It  would  be  impossible  for  the  most 
plodding  inspector,  who  never  dared  commit  a  sonnet 
or  an  essay,  to  deal  with  his  subject  in  a  way  showing 
better  acquaintance  with  it,  more  interest  in  it,  or 
more  business-like  abstinence  from  fads,  and  flights,  and 
flings.  Faint  and  far-off  suggestions  of  the  biographer 
of  Arminius  may,  indeed,  by  a  very  sensitive  reader,  be 
discovered  in  the  slightly  eccentric  suggestion  that  the 
Latin  of  the  Vulgate  (of  which  Mr  Arnold  himself  was 
justly  fond)  should  be  taught  in  primary  schools,  and 
in  the  rather  perverse  coupling  of  "  vScott  and  Mrs 
Hemans."  But  these  are  absolutely  the  only  approaches 
to  naughtiness  in  the  whole  volume.  It  is  a  real  misfor- 
tune that  the  nature  of  the  subject  should  make  readers 


2l8  MATTHEW  ARNOLD. 

of  the  book  unlikely  to  be  ever  numerous  ;  for  it  supplies 
a  side  of  its  author's  character  nowhere  else  (except  in 
glimpses)  provided  by  his  extant  work.  It  may  even  be 
doubted,  by  those  who  have  read  it,  whether  "  cutting 
blocks  with  a  razor"  is  such  a  Gothamite  proceeding 
as  it  is  sometimes  held  to  be.  For  in  this  case  the 
blocks  are  chopped  as  well  as  the  homeliest  bill-hook 
could  do  it ;  and  we  know  that  the  razor  was  none  the 
blunter.  At  any  rate,  the  ethical  document  is  one  of 
the  highest  value,  and  very  fit,  indeed,  to  be  recom- 
mended to  the  attention  of  young  gentlemen  of  genius 
who  think  it  the  business  of  the  State  to  provide  for 
them,  and  not  to  require  any  dismal  drudgery  from  them 
in  return. 

But  the  importance  of  Mr  Arnold  to  English  history 
and  English  literature  has,  of  course,  little  or  nothing 
to  do  with  his  official  work.  The  faithful  performance 
of  that  work  is  important  to  his  character ;  and  the 
character  of  the  work  itself  colours  very  importantly, 
and,  as  we  have  seen,  not  perhaps  always  to  unmitigated 
advantage,  the  nature  of  his  performances  as  a  man  of 
letters.  But  it  is  as  a  man  of  letters,  as  a  poet,  as  a 
critic,  and  perhaps  most  of  all  as  both  combined,  that 
he  ranks  for  history  and  for  the  world. 

A  detailed  examination  of  his  poetic  performance 
has  been  attempted  in  the  earlier  pages  of  this  little 
book,  as  well  as  some  general  remarks  upon  it ;  but  we 
may  well  find  room  here  for  something  more  general  still. 
That  the  poet  is  as  much  above  the  prose-writer  in  rank 


CONCLUSION.  219 

as  he  is  admittedly  of  an  older  creation,  has  alway§  been 
held  ;  and  here,  as  elsewhere,  I  am  not  careful  to  attempt 
innovation.  In  fact,  though  it  may  seem  unkind  to  say 
so,  it  may  be  suspected  that  nobody  has  ever  tried  to 
elevate  the  function  of  the  prose-writer  above  that  of  the 
poet,  unless  he  thought  he  could  write  great  prose  and 
knew  he  could  not  write  great  poetry.  But  in  another 
order  of  estimate  than  this,  Mr  Arnold's  poetic  work 
may  seem  of  greater  value  than  his  prose,  always  ad- 
mirable and  sometimes  consummate  as  the  latter  is, 
if  we  take  each  at  its  best. 

At  its  best — and  this  is  how,  though  he  would  him- 
self seem  to  have  sometimes  felt  inclined  to  dispute  the 
fact,  we  must  reckon  a  poet.  His  is  not  poetry  of  the 
absolutely  trustworthy  kind.  It  is  not  like  that  of 
Shelley  or  of  Keats,  who,  when  their  period  of  mere 
juvenility  is  past,  simply  cannot  help  writing  poetry ; 
nor  is  it,  on  the  other  hand,  like  that  of  Wordsworth,  who 
flies  and  flounders  with  an  incalculable  and  apparently 
irresponsible  alternation.  It  is  rather — though  I  should 
rank  it  far  higher,  on  all  but  the  historic  estimate,  than 
Gray's — like  that  of  Gray.  The  poet  has  in  him  a  vein, 
or,  if  the  metaphor  be  preferred,  a  spring,  of  the  most 
real  and  rarest  poetry.  But  the  vein  is  constantly 
broken  by  faults,  and  never  very  thick ;  the  spring  is 
intermittent,  and  runs  at  times  by  drops  only.  There 
is  always,  as  it  were,  an  effort  to  get  it  to  yield  freely,  to 
run  clear  and  constant.  And — again  as  in  the  case  of 
Gray — the  poet  subjects  himself  to  a  further  disability  by 


220  MATTHEW  ARNOLD. 

all  manner  of  artificial  restrictions,  struggles  to  comply 
with  this  or  that  system,  theories,  formulas,  tricks.  He 
will  not  "  indulge  his  genius."  And  so  it  is  but  rarely 
that  we  get  things  like  the  Scholar-Gipsy^  like  the  For- 
saken Merman^  like  the  second  Isolation  ;  and  when  we 
do  get  such  things  there  is  sometimes,  as  in  the  case  of 
the  peroration  to  Sohrab  and  Rustu7n^  and  perhaps  the 
splendid  opening  of  Westminster  Abbey  and  Thyrsis^  a 
certain  sense  of  parade,  of  the  elaborate  assumption  of 
the  singing-robe.  There  is  too  seldom  the  sensation 
which  Coleridge  unconsciously  suggested  in  the  poem 
that  heralded  the  poetry  of  the  nineteenth  century. 
We  do  not  feel  that 


that 


"The  fair  breeze  blew,  the  white  foam  flew, 
The  furrow  followed  free  " — 

'  *  We  were  the  first  that  ever  burst 
Into  that  silent  sea  ; " 


but  that  a  mighty  launch  of  elaborate  preparation  is 
taking  place,  that  we  are  pleased  and  orderly  spectators 
standing  round,  and  that  the  ship  is  gliding  in  due 
manner,  but  with  no  rush  or  burst,  into  the  sea  of 
poetry.  While  elsewhere  there  may  be  even  the  sense 
of  effort  and  preparation  without  the  success. 

But,  once  more,  a  poet  is  to  be  judged  first  by  his 
best  things,  and  secondly  by  a  certain  aura  or  atmos- 
phere, by  a  nameless,  intangible,  but  sensible  quality, 
which,  now  nearer  and  fuller,  now  farther  and  tamter, 
is  over   his   work   throughout.       In   both   respects    Mr 


CONCLUSION.  221 

Arnold  passes  the  test.  The  things  mentioned  above 
and  others,  even  many  others,  are  the  right  things. 
They  do  not  need  the  help  of  that  rotten  reed,  the 
subject,  to  warrant  and  support  them  ;  we  know  that 
they  are  in  accordance  with  the  great  masters,  but  we 
do  not  care  whether  they  are  or  not.  They  sound  the 
poetic  note ;  they  give  the  poetic  flash  and  iridescence ; 
they  cause  the  poetic  intoxication.  Even  in  things  not 
by  any  means  of  the  best  as  wholes,  you  may  follow 
that  gleam  safely.  The  exquisite  revulsion  of  the 
undertone  in  Bacchanalia — 

"  Ah  !  so  the  silence  was, 
So  was  the  hush  ;  " 

the  honey-dropping  trochees  of  the  N'ew  Sirens ;  the 
description  of  the  poet  in  Resignation  ;  the  outburst — 

*'  WTiat  voices  are  these  on  the  clear  night  air  ?" 

of  Tristram  and  Iseuit ;  the  melancholy  meditation  of 
A  Summer  Night  and  Dover  Beach^  with  the  plangent 
note  so  cunningly  yet  so  easily  accommodated  to  the 
general  tone  and  motive  of  the  piece,  —  these  and  a 
hundred  other  things  fulfil  all  the  requirements  of  the 
true  poetic  criticism,  which  only  marks,  and  only  asks 
for,  the  differeiitia  of  poetry. 

And  this  poetic  moment — this  (if  one  may  use  the 
words,  about  another  matter,  of  one  who  wrote  no 
poetry,  yet  had  more  than  all  but  three  or  four  poets), 
this   "exolution,   liquefaction,    transformation,   the   kiss 


222  MATTHEW  ARNOLD. 

of  the  spouse,  and  ingression  into  the  divine  shadow" 
which  poetry  and  poetry  alone  confers  upon  the  fit 
readers  of  it — is  never  far  off  or  absent  for  long  to- 
gether in  Mr  Arnold's  verse.  His  command  of  it  is 
indeed  uncertain.  But  all  over  his  work,  from  The 
Strayed  Reveller  to  Westminster  Abbey ^  it  may  happen 
at  any  minute,  and  it  does  happen  at  many  minutes. 
This  is  what  makes  a  poet :  not  the  most  judicious 
selection  of  subject,  not  the  most  studious  contem- 
plation and,  as  far  as  he  manages  it,  representation  of 
the  grand  style  and  the  great  masters.  And  this  is 
what  Mr  Arnold  has. 

That  his  prose,  admirable  as  it  always  is  in  form  and 
invaluable  as  it  often  is  in  matter,  is  on  the  whole 
inferior  to  his  verse,  is  by  no  means  a  common  opinion, 
though  it  was  expressed  by  some  good  judges  both  dur- 
ing his  life  and  at  the  time  of  his  death.  As  we  have 
seen,  both  from  a  chance  indication  in  his  own  letters 
and  from  Mr  Humphry  Ward's  statement,  he  took  very 
great  pains  with  it ;  indeed,  internal  evidence  would  be 
sufficient  to  establish  this  if  we  had  no  positive  external 
testimony  whatsoever.  He  came  at  a  fortunate  time, 
when  the  stately  yet  not  pompous  or  over-elaborated 
model  of  the  latest  Georgian  prose,  raised  from  early 
Georgian  "drabness"  by  the  efforts  of  Johnson,  Gibbon, 
and  Burke,  but  not  proceeding  to  the  extremes  of  any 
of  the  three,  was  still  the  academic  standard ;  but  when 
a  certain  freedom  on  the  one  side,  and  a  certain  grace 
and  colour   on   the  other,  were  being  taken   from  the 


CONCLUSION.  223 

new  experiments  of  nineteenth  -  century  prose  proper. 
Wiiether  he  or  his  contemporary  Mr  Froude  was  the 
greatest  master  of  this  particular  blend  is  a  (juestion 
which  no  doubt  had  best  be  answered  by  the  individual 
taste  of  the  competent.  I  should  say  myself  that  Mr 
Froude  at  certain  moments  rose  higher  than  Mr  Arnold 
ever  did ;  nothing  of  the  latter's  can  approach  that 
magnificent  passage  on  the  passing  of  the  Middle  Ages 
and  on  the  church-bell  sound  that  memorises  it.  And 
Mr  Froude  was  also  free  from  the  mannerisms,  at  times 
amounting  to  very  distinct  affectation,  to  which,  in  his 
middle  period  more  especially,  Mr  Arnold  succumbed. 
But  he  did  not  quite  keep  his  friend's  high  level  of 
distinction  and  temie.  It  was  almost  impossible  for  Mr 
Arnold  to  be  slipshod — I  do  not  mean  in  the  sense  of 
the  composition-books,  which  is  mostly  an  unimportant 
sense,  but  in  one  quite  different ;  and  he  never,  as  Mr 
Froude  sometimes  did,  contented  himself  with  correct 
but  ordinary  writing.  If  his  defect  was  mannerism,  his 
quality  was  certain  manner. 

The  most  noticeable,  the  most  easily  imitated,  and 
the  most  doubtful  of  his  mannerisms  was,  of  course,  the 
famous  iteration,  which  was  probably  at  first  natural,  but 
which,  as  we  see  from  the  Letters^  he  afterwards  deliber- 
ately fostered  and  accentuated,  in  order,  as  he  thought, 
the  better  to  get  his  new  ideas  into  the  heads  of  what  the 
type-writer  sometimes  calls  the  "Br//tish"  public.  That 
it  became  at  times  extremely  teasing  is  beyond  argument, 
and  I  should  be  rather  afraid  that  Prince  Posterity  will 


224  MATTHEW  ARNOLD. 

be  even  more  teased  by  it  than  we  are,  because  to  him 
the  ideas  it  enforces  will  be,  and  will  have  been  ever 
since  he  can  remember,  obvious  and  common-place 
enough.  But  when  this  and  some  other  peccadillos 
(on  which  it  is  unnecessary  to  dwell,  lest  we  imitate  the 
composition  -  books  aforesaid)  were  absent  or  even 
moderately  present,  sometimes  even  in  spite  of  their 
intrusion,  Mr  Arnold's  style  was  of  a  curiously  fascinating 
character.  I  have  often  thought  that,  in  the  good  sense 
of  that  unlucky  word  "  genteel,"  this  style  deserves  it 
far  more  than  the  style  either  of  Shaftesbury  or  of 
Temple ;  while  in  its  different  and  nineteenth-century 
way,  it  is  as  much  a  model  of  the  "middle"  style, 
neither  very  plain  nor  very  ornate,  but  "elegant,"  as 
Addison's  own.  Yet  it  is  observable  that  all  the  three 
writers  just  mentioned  keep  their  place,  except  with 
deliberate  students  of  the  subject,  rather  by  courtesy  or 
prescription  than  by  actual  conviction  and  relish  on  the 
part  of  readers  :  and  it  is  possible  that  something  of 
the  same  kind  may  happen  in  Mr  Arnold's  case  also, 
when  his  claims  come  to  be  considered  by  other  genera- 
tions from  the  merely  formal  point  of  view.  Nor  can 
those  claims  be  said  to  be  very  securely  based  in  respect 
of  matter.  It  is  impossible  to  believe  that  posterity  will 
trouble  itself  about  the  dreary  apologetics  of  undogmatism 
on  which  he  wasted  so  much  precious  time  and  energy; 
they  will  have  been  arranged  by  the  Prince's  governor 
on  the  shelves,  with  Hobbe^s  mathematics  and  Southey's 
political  essays.     "  But  the  criticism,"  it  will  be  said, 


CONCLUSION.  225 

^''that  ought  to  endure."  No  doubt  from  some  points 
of  view  it  ought,  but  will  it  ?  So  long,  or  as  soon,  as 
English  literature  is  intelligently  taught  in  universities, 
it  is  sure  of  its  place  in  any  decently  arranged  course  of 
Higher  Rhetoric ;  so  long,  or  as  soon,  as  critics  consider 
themselves  bound  to  study  the  history  and  documents 
of  their  business,  it  will  be  read  by  them.  But  what 
hold  does  this  give  it  ?  Certainly  not  a  stronger  hold 
than  that  of  Dryden's  Essay  of  Dra?natic  Poesy ^  which, 
though  some  of  us  may  know  it  by  heart,  can  scarcely 
be  said  to  be  a  commonly  read  classic. 

The  fact  is — and  no  one  knew  this  fact  more  thor- 
oughly, or  would  have  acknowledged  it  more  frankly, 
than  Mr  Arnold  himself — that  criticism  has,  of  all 
literature  that  is  really  literature,  the  most  precarious 
existence.  Each  generation  likes,  and  is  hardly  wrong 
in  liking,  to  create  for  itself  in  this  province,  to  which 
creation  is  so  scornfully  denied  by  some ;  and  old 
critics  are  to  all  but  experts  (and  apparently  to  some 
of  them)  as  useless  as  old  moons.  Nor  can  one  help 
regretting  that  so  long  a  time  has  been  lost  in  put- 
ting before  the  public  a  cheap,  complete,  handy,  and 
fairly  handsome  edition  of  the  whole  of  Mr  Arnold's 
prose.  There  is  no  doubt  at  all  that  the  existence  of 
such  an  edition,  even  before  his  death,  was  part  cause, 
and  a  large  part  of  the  cause,  of  the  great  and  con- 
tinued popularity  of  De  Quincey  ;  and  it  is  a  thousand 
pities  that,  before  a  generation  arises  which  knows  him 
not,  Mr  Arnold  is  not  allowed  the  same  chance.     As 


226  MATTHEW   ARNOLD. 

it  is,  not  a  little  of  his  work  has  never  been  reprinted 
at  all ;  some  of  the  rest  is  difficult  of  access,  and 
what  there  is  exists  in  numerous  volumes  of  different 
forms,  some  cheap,  some  dear,  the  whole  cumbersome. 
And  if  his  prose  work  seems  to  me  inferior  to  his 
poetical  in  absolute  and  perennial  value,  its  value  is 
still  very  great.  Not  so  much  English  prose  has  that 
character  of  grace,  of  elegance,  which  has  been  vindi- 
cated for  this,  that  we  can  afford  to  lay  aside  or  to 
forget  such  consummate  examples  of  it.  Academic 
urbanity  is  not  so  universal  a  feature  of  our  race — 
the  constant  endeavour  at  least  to  "  live  by  the  law 
of  the  per  as  ^^^  to  observe  lucidity,  to  shun  exaggera- 
tion, is  scarcely  so  endemic.  Let  it  be  added,  too, 
that  if  not  as  the  sole,  yet  as  the  chief,  herald  and 
champion  of  the  new  criticism,  as  a  front-fighter  in 
the  revolutions  of  literary  view  which  have  distin- 
guished the  latter  half  of  the  nineteenth  century  in 
England,  Mr  Arnold  will  be  forgotten  or  neglected 
at  the  peril  of  the  generations  and  the  individuals 
that  forget  or  neglect  him. 

Little  need  be  added  about  the  loss  of  actual 
artistic  pleasure  which  such  neglect  must  bring.  Mr 
Arnold  may  never,  in  prose,  be  read  with  quite  the 
same  keenness  of  delight  with  which  we  read  him  in 
poetry ;  but  he  will  yield  delight  more  surely.  His 
manner,  except  in  his  rare  "thorn-crackling"  moments, 
and  sometimes  even  then,  will  carry  off  even  the  less 


CONCLUSION.  227 

agreeable  matter ;   with  matter  at  all  agreeable,   it  has 
a  hardly  to  be  exaggerated  charm. 

But  it  is  in  his  general  literary  position  that  Mr 
Arnold's  strongest  title  to  eminence  consists.  There 
have  certainly  been  greater  poets  in  English  :  I  think 
there  have  been  greater  critics.  But  as  poet  and 
critic  combined,  no  one  but  Dryden  and  Coleridge 
can  be  for  a  moment  placed  beside  him  :  the  fate 
of  the  false  Florimel  must  await  all  others  who 
dare  that  adventure.  And  if  he  must  yield  —  yield 
by  a  long  way  —  to  Dryden  in  strength  and  easy 
command  of  whatsoever  craft  he  tried,  to  Coleridge 
in  depth  and  range  and  philosophical  grasp,  yet  he 
has  his  revenges.  Beside  his  delicacy  and  his  cos- 
mopolitan accomplishment,  Dryden  is  blunt  and  un- 
scholarly ;  beside  his  directness  of  aim,  if  not  always 
of  achievement,  his  clearness  of  vision,  his  almost 
business-like  adjustment  of  effort  to  result,  the  vague- 
ness and  desultoriness  of  Coleridge  look  looser  and, 
in  the  literary  sense,  more  disreputable  than  ever. 
Here  was  a  man  who  could  not  only  criticise  but 
create ;  who,  though  he  may  sometimes,  like  others, 
have  convicted  his  preaching  of  falsity  by  his  practice, 
and  his  practice  of  sin  by  his  preaching,  yet  could  in 
the  main  make  practice  and  preaching  fit  together. 
Here  was  a  critic  against  whom  the  foolish  charge, 
"You  can  break,  but  you  cannot  make,"  was  con- 
fessedly  impossible — a   poet   who    knew   not   only   the 


228  MATTHEW  ARNOLD. 

rule  of  thumb,  but  the  rule  of  the  uttermost  art.  In 
him  the  corruption  of  the  poet  had  not  been  the 
generation  of  the  critic,  as  his  great  predecessor  in 
the  two  arts,  himself  secure  and  supreme  in  both, 
had  scornfully  said.  Both  faculties  had  always  ex- 
isted, and  did  always  exist,  side  by  side  in  him.  He 
might  exercise  one  more  freely  at  one  time,  one  at 
another;  but  the  author  of  the  Preface  of  1853  was 
a  critic,  and  a  ripe  one,  in  his  heyday  of  poetry,  the 
author  of  Westminster  Abbey  was  a  poet  in  his  mel- 
lowest autumn  of  criticism. 

And  yet  he  was  something  more  than  both  these 
things,  more  than  both  of  these  at  once.  But  for  that 
unlucky  divagation  in  the  Wilderness,  his  life  would  have 
been  the  life  of  a  man  of  letters  only  as  far  as  choice 
went,  with  the  duties  of  no  dishonourable  profession 
superadded.  And  even  with  the  divagation  it  was 
mainly  and  really  this.  To  find  parallels  for  Mr  Arnold 
in  his  unflinching  devotion  to  literature  we  must,  I 
fear,  go  elsewhere  than  to  Dryden  or  to  Coleridge,  we 
must  go  to  Johnson  and  Southey.  And  here  again 
we  may  find  something  in  him  beyond  both,  in  that 
he  had  an  even  nobler  conception  of  Literature  than 
either.  That  he  would  have  put  her  even  too  high, 
would  have  assigned  to  her  functions  which  she  is 
unable  to  discharge,  is  true  enough ;  but  this  is  at 
least  no  vulgar  error.  Against  ignoble  neglect,  against 
stolid   misunderstanding,  against  mushroom  rivalry,  he 


CONCLUSION.  229 

championed  her  alike.     And  it  was  most  certainly  from 
no  base  motive.      If  he  wanted  an  English  Academy,  I 
am  quite  sure  it  was  not  from  any  desire  for  a  canary 
ribbon  or  a   sixteen -pointed   star.      Yet,  after   Southcy 
himself  in  the  first  half  of  the  century,  who  has  done  so 
much  for  letters  qua  letters  as  Mr  Arnold  in  the  second  ? 
His  poems  were  never  popular,  and  he  tried  no  other  of 
the  popular  departments  of  literature.      But  he  wrote, 
and  I  think  he  could  write,  nothing  that  was  not  litera- 
ture, in  and  by  the  fact  that  he  was  its  writer.     It  has 
been  observed  of  others  in  other  kinds,  that  somehow 
or  other,  by  merely  living,  by  pursuing  their  own  arts 
or   crafts  whatever    they   were,    they   raised    those    arts 
and  crafts  in  dignity,  they  bestowed  on  them  as  it  were 
a  rank,  a  position.     A  few — a  very  few — at  successive 
times  have  done  this  for  literature  in  England,  and  Mr 
Arnold  was  perhaps  the  last  who  did  it  notably  in  ours. 
One  cannot  imagine  him  writing  merely  for  money,  for 
position,   even  for  fame — for   anything   but   the   devoir 
of  the  born  and  sworn  servant  of  Apollo  and   Pallas. 
Such   devotion    need   not,   of   course,   forbid   others   of 
their   servants    to   try   his    shield    now   and    then   with 
courteous  arms  or  even  at  sharps — as  he  tried  many. 
But  it  was  so  signal,  so  happy  in  its   general   results, 
so   exactly  what  was  required   in   and   for   England  at 
the   time,    that   recognition   of  it   can    never   be    frank 
enough,    or    cordial    enough,    or    too    much    admiring. 
Whenever   I   think   of  Mr  Arnold  it  is  in  those  own 


230  MATTHEW  ARNOLD. 

words  of  his,  which  I  have  quoted  already,  and  which 
I  quoted  to  myself  on  the  hill  by  Hinksey  as  I  began 
this  little  book  in  the  time  of  fritillaries — 

"Still  nursing  the  unconquerable  hope, 
Still  clutching  the  inviolable  shade  " — 

the  hope  and  shade  that  never  desert,  even  if  they 
flit  before  and  above,  the  servants  and  the  lovers  of 
the  humaner  literature. 


INDEX. 


Alaric  at  Rome,  4, 

Bacchanalia,    or    the    New    Age, 

114. 
Balder  Dead,  52,  53. 
Byron,  Poetry  of,  ed.  Arnold,  185. 

Celtic  Literature,  On  the  Study  of, 

66,  104  et  seq. 
Church  of  Brou,  The,  38. 
Consolation,  28. 
Cromwell,  8,  9. 
Culture  and  Anarchy,  128  et  seq. 

Discourses  in  America,  195. 
Dover  Beach ,  112. 

Empedocles  ofi  Etna,  23. 

Essays   in    Criticism,    83    et  seq., 

123. 
Eton,  A  French,  79  et  seq. 

Farewell,  A,  27. 
Forsaken  Merman,  The,  19. 
French  Eton,  A,  j^  et  seq. 
Friend,  To  a,  sonnet,  15. 
Friendship' s  Garland,  148. 

God  and  the  Bible,  137. 

Heine's  Grave,  115. 
Homer,  On  Translating,  66, 

In  Utrumque  Paratus,  20. 
Irish  Essays,  151. 
Isolation,  31. 


Johnson's  Lives  of  the  Poets,  ed. 
Arnold,  169. 

Last  Essays  on   Church   and  Re- 
ligion, 137,  142. 
I^etters,  i,  15  et  seq.,  214. 
Lines  written  by  a  Death-bed,  32. 
Literature  and  Dogma,  i^i  et  seq. 
Longing,  30. 

Marguerite,  To,  31. 
Memorial  Verses,  26. 
Alerman,  7 he  Forsaken,  19. 
Merope,  60. 

Mixed  Essays,  168  et  seq. 
Modern  Sappho,  The,  17. 
Mycerinus,  13. 

A^w  Sirens,  The,  17. 

Obermann,  53. 

0«  //[^  Rhine,  29. 

0«  M^  Study  of  Celtic  Literature, 

66,  104  <'/  .vf^. 
(9//  the  Terrace  at  Berne,  16. 
On  Translating  Homer,  66. 

Preface,   the,    to   the   '  Poems '  of 

1853,  33  <•'  ^e<I- 
Prose  Passages,  166. 

Renan,    Arnold's    relations    with, 

loi. 
Reqiiiescaf,  39. 
Resignation,  20,  185. 
Rugby  Chapel,  115. 


232 


INDEX. 


Sainte-Beuve,  59,  203. 
Scholar-Gipsy,  The,  5,  40  et  seg. 
Schools  and   Universities    on    the 

Continent,  116. 
Selected  Poems,  184. 
Shairp,  Principal,  lines  on  Arnold 

by,  5- 
Shakespeare,  Sonnet  to,  15. 
Sick  King  in  Bokhara,  15. 
Sohrab  atid  Rustum,  37,  51,  52. 
Southey,   use  of  rhymeless  metre 

by,  II. 
St  Brandan,  iii. 
St  Paul  and  Protestantism^   130 

et  seq. 
Stagirius,  19. 

Strayed  Reveller,  The,  10  et  seq. 
Summer  Night,  A,  26. 


Switzerland,  16. 

Tennyson,  influence  of,  on  Arnold, 

19. 
Thy r sis,  iii. 
To  Fausta,  19. 
To  Marguerite,  31. 
To  my  Friends  who  Ridiculed  a 

Tender  Leave-taking,  16,  27. 
Tristram  and  Iseult,  24,  25. 

Voice,  The,  19. 

Ward's    English    Poets,   Arnold's 

Introduction  to,  189. 
Westminster  Abbey,  207,  220,  228. 
Wordsworth,  Poems  of,  ed.  Arnold, 

185. 


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J066  B.        Matthew  Arnold  gfairge  SAINTSBURY 


In  this  work  on  "  Matthew  Arnold,"  Mr  Saintsbury  presents  a  welcome  addition 
to  the  too  scant  knowledge  we  now  have  of  this  eminent  poet,  critic,  and  man  of  let- 
ters. In  form  it  is  biographical  and  critical,  but  largely  critical,  his  only  source  of 
biography  being  the  poet's  own  letters,  and  even  in  these,  "  things  literary  "  play 
so  large  a  part  as  almost  to  exclude  the  bire  facts  of  existence.  Kven  these  letters 
alTord  no  information  previous  to  the  poet's  twenty-fifth  year,  and  so  sparingly  even 
for  some  time  following,  that  Mr.  Saintsbury  turns  for  much  of  his  material  to 
Matthew  Arnold's  poems,  in  which  he  says  this  early  period  was  p.irticularly  fer- 
tile. ()n  the  whole  he  has  given  us  a  picture  of  Matthew  Arnold  which  has 
less  the  merits  of  a  portrait  painted  from  life  than  those  of  an  excellent  pt)rtrait 
from  an  old  photograph  or  daguerrotype. — Condensed  from  The  Book  Buyer. 


